Håkan Christensson, marketing and sales manager at Culinar told BakeryandSnacks.com that the heat stability and longer release profile of its new flavour carrier system, Culinax, means it can also improve the flavour quality of low-fat products, such as snacks and gives flavourful freshness to long shelf-life products such as cookies.
He claims that the flavouring of baked or extruded products is a significant challenge in that the molecules that are added to dough or batter are always in danger of being released and altered due to high temperature during baking or extrusion, frequently resulting in taste neutral final products.
According to Christensson, the Culinax system overcomes this problem in the fact that its carrier system protects the flavour from undergoing evaporation or oxidation during the manufacturing process, and the flavour is only released on chewing.
“Culinax can help bakery companies to extend lines and reposition products and play with new flavours. For example, we can develop one flavour for the biscuit and another flavour for its filling,” added Christensson.
He maintains that the system has been proven with the addition of a fruit flavour to a commercial snack product – rice cakes – proving heat stable at high temperatures and also through the successful addition of an orange flavour to a cake product for a Swedish baked goods manufacturer.
“If you take a flavour like orange, traditionally it has to be added to bakery products such as cakes in high doses which renders the product bitter with a slight chemical aftertaste but our flavour carrier system enables the manufacturer to lower the dosage, resulting in a more natural flavour profile,” said Christensson.
He added that the results demonstrated that there was no limitations on flavour shelf life using the Culinax system.
Christensson explained that the company develops flavour profiles in collaboration with manufacturers, based in Europe and Asia, taking into account their specific product requirements.
Culinex was awarded an Excellence Award at the recent Food Ingredients Europe (FIE) trade show in Frankfurt.