Miniature bread baking as a timesaving research approach and mathematical modeling of browning kinetics

•Miniature bread baking is presented as an economical laboratory approach.•Miniature bread baking is essentially analogical to the baking process of regular-sized bread.•The surface browning kinetics are accurately predicted.

Miniature bread baking is presented as an economical and timesaving laboratory approach to study the baking process in the present work. Results indicate that the miniature bread baking is essentially analogical to the baking process of regular-sized bread: quality-related properties of miniature breads, such as crumb formation, crust thickness, crust color and moisture content, behaved similarly to regular-sized breads (380 g) during baking, albeit at a different time scale. This was explained as analogous for large breads, initially baking is externally limited and only later internal limitations play a dominant role with the crust being formed. After initial development of the crust, the lightness and the total color difference were found linearly correlated with the crust thickness. Moreover, the S-REA (spatial reaction engineering approach) was used here to model the moisture content and temperature during miniature bread baking whose results were implemented to describe the browning kinetics. The results indicate that the S-REA accurately models the browning kinetics during miniature bread baking.