Investigating Product Behavior During Storage in Packaging Materials - A Study on Freshly Baked Croissants
Abstract: Very short shelf life of ‘freshly’ baked croissants is a growing concern for food retailers. It is affecting the economics of business, causing 10 to 40% in-store food wastage, and puts natural resources under severe stress. The factors affecting the shelf life are loss of crispness of the crust, and increased firmness of the crumb. This is largely due to migration of water from crumb to crust during storage period. Using appropriate packaging material the rate of moisture migration can be slowed down. Currently paper/polyethylene laminate, polyethylene terephthalate and polypropylene materials are used to pack croissants. However, the product shelf life is not more than 12 hrs. The study concluded that using monolayer oriented-polypropylene film with perforations (WVTR of 10-14 g m-2 day-1) and multilayer oriented- polyethylene terephthalate film with or without ethylene vinyl alcohol polymer (WVTR of 9.2-9.5 g m-2 day-1) the moisture migration phenomenon in croissants is slowed down. Further, the crispness of packed croissants was lost at 6 h storage, however softness of crumb is preserved up to 24 h.
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