Establishing the relative importance of damaged starch and fructan as sources of fermentable sugars in wheat flour and whole meal bread dough fermentations

•Fructan is the primary sugar source during the first hour of fermentation.•Invertase action is at least equally important for sugar release as amylase action.•Higher sucrose levels positively affect fermentation speed and duration.•High amylolytic activity only leads to prolongation of productive fermentation time.

It is generally believed that maltose drives yeast-mediated bread dough fermentation. The relative importance of fructose and glucose, released from wheat fructan and sucrose by invertase, compared to maltose is, however, not documented. This is surprising given the preference of yeast for glucose and fructose over maltose. This study revealed that, after 2 h fermentation of wheat flour dough, about 44% of the sugars consumed were generated by invertase-mediated degradation of fructan, raffinose and sucrose. The other 56% were generated by amylases. In whole meal dough, 70% of the sugars consumed were released by invertase activity. Invertase-mediated sugar release seems to be crucial during the first hour of fermentation, while amylase-mediated sugar release was predominant in the later stages of fermentation, which explains why higher amylolytic activity prolonged the productive fermentation time only. These results illustrate the importance of wheat fructan and sucrose content and their degradation for dough fermentations.