Chilling and freezing of part-baked bread. Part I: An MRI signal analysis

The present paper presents and discusses the results of this preliminary work. NMR and MRI experiments with non-yeasted dough revealed that during the pre-chilling step the MRI signal in a given voxel was mainly proportional to the local density (or inversely proportional to the local porosity) of the bread and to a lesser extent to the local liquid water content of the crumb, as water vapor is not visible with MRI. The MRI signal is assumed to decrease proportionally to the local ice content during the freezing step.