Cakes and other baked foods with lighter textures can be especially challenging to formulate when adding fiber.

“Soft, moist, tender low-density applications with light textures such as cakes and muffins and traditional sugar and chocolate chip cookies are a few examples,” said Cynthia Machado, PhD, senior technical and business development manager, global ingredients, Blue Diamond Growers. “A fiber that is not the most ideal for the application can negatively impact the texture that consumers expect from these soft, moist, tender and low density baked goods.”

She suggested making sure to select the appropriate source of fiber and optimizing fiber blends by using a mix of ingredients to mitigate the dense texture. In addition, altering the order of when ingredients are mixed together can help improve the final product.

Tanya Jeradechachai, vice president of R&D, ingredient solutions at MGP Ingredients, mentioned angel food cake as the toughest to formulate with fiber because of its sensitivity to added ingredients.

“Angel food cakes are baked from a mixture of egg whites, flour and sugar plus other minor ingredients,” she said. “A dietary fiber ingredient added to an angel food cake formula may have a destabilizing effect on the aerated texture from whipped egg whites before baking and on the light and fluffy texture of the finished baked cake.”

Light, puffy and flaky items such as croissants, popovers and other layered doughs can be negatively impacted by the addition of fiber, noted Charolette Browder, product development project manager, Futureceuticals.

“Due to the weight of the fiber — since it soaks up water — flaky items are weighed down and can’t puff or properly leaven, which makes the baked item denser,” she said. “Adding other ingredients to counteract that density, like supplementing the formula with a wheat gluten to create more structure, can help, but a baker will also need to remove the weight of those dry ingredients from another dry source in the formula. Alternatively, bakers can add more moisture to counter the addition of the dry ingredients. It’s a delicate balance that requires testing and often multiple iterations to get it right.”

Applications that rely on gluten for structure and support can also be challenging when adding fiber, said Darin Reid, applications scientist, Fiberstar Inc.

“Insoluble fiber will hold water, reducing the amount available for gluten formation,” he said. “However, soluble fiber can help lightly bond the gluten proteins, assisting in keeping the strength. Additionally, the swelling of the fiber can physically separate the two protein components of gluten and prevent them from combining to form gluten. Increased water content, increased mixing time and speeds, additional gluten fortification, and including soluble fiber can help make up for the reduced gluten formation.”

High-fiber formulations can also lead to weak doughs that are hard to process, Jeradechachai said. Wheat protein isolates can help such as MGP’s Arise, which can help with dough handling and overall product improvement.

This article is an excerpt from the February 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Fiber, click here.