Articles techniques et présentations

Bread baking is a complex process where various physiochemical and biological transformations take place simultaneously. A two dimensional model was developed for the bread baking process taking into account of volume expansion, heat and mass transfer processes. Phase change and evaporation-condensation mechanism were incorporated by defining thermo-physical properties of bread as a function of temperature and moisture content. The Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method was applied to describe movement of mesh during volume expansion. COMSOL\'s simulation results were validated with experimental measurements of bread temperature and moisture content. This study demonstrated that formation of evaporation-condensation front, crust formation and volume expansion can be modeled using the finite element modeling approaches. Occurrence of evaporation-condensation front near crust and crumb boundary and high value of latent heat of phase change keeps crumb temperature below 100°C. Linear increase in volume was observed for the first four minutes only and volume remains constant for remaining entire baking process. Baking process was complete in 25 minutes.