Cream fillings in bakery products are delicious fresh. However, when frozen, these products lose their reign in quality. Citri-Fi natural fiber is an ideal clean solution that helps stabilize cream-based components in various processing and storage conditions including freeze/thaw.
Imagine you are walking down the street and the smell of warm butter and sugar lasso you into the nearest patisserie. Once through the door, your eyes light up as you stare at the assortment of eclairs, pies, Danishes and croissants. And in the middle of this sweet Eden sits the puffed pastry filled with thick, luscious cream. She is the princess of the counter display!
Fresh to Frozen Challenges
To replicate fresh filled puffed pastry in conventional mass markets is deemed high maintenance. Cream puffed pastries are sold separately frozen for those who prefer to assemble on site. Or the whole filled puffed pastry can be sold in the freezer case in one piece. Regardless how the product is frozen, stability is a top concern due to the multiple freeze/thaw cycles.
Creams tend to separate partly due to the weak emulsification and water bonds. As a result, the cream may leech water or cause syneresis which also negatively affects the texture. This water migration in the cream filling has a tendency to soften and sog the exterior pastry during freeze/thaw cycles. Some easy fixes include using starches or gums to hold the water thru these cycles. However, even those ingredients tend to let go of water over time. And depending on the formulator, some ingredients may not fit the clean label bill.
A Natural Low Maintenance Solution
One easy-to-use solution is to use Citri-Fi® natural citrus fiber. This natural ingredient’s high surface area provides high water holding capacity and emulsification properties. Citri-Fi products contain natural pectins and proteins that are able to simultaneously hold up to 13 times their weight in water and eight times their weight in fat without breaking down over time nor under high or low temperature conditions. As a result, Citri-Fi 100FG or 200FG between 0.3% to 1.0% stabilizes the product.
The Citri-Fi 200FG is a co-processed blend containing natural citrus fiber and guar gum. Moreover, the natural chemical composition has a total dietary fiber content of approximately 75%. The physical and hydrogen bonds minimize water release in most freeze/thaw conditions. And the guar gum provides some additional viscosity to improve the consistency during processing and in the final product. Another benefit of Citri-Fi products is their clean label. The Citri-Fi 100FG contains only citrus fiber and can be labeled as citrus flour, dried citrus pulp or citrus fiber.
Citri-Fi gives clean label formulators a leading edge in creating high quality frozen cream-based desserts. This natural ingredient is non-GMO, allergen-free and gluten-free which is ideal for “free from” foods like non-dairy creams. That topic is a whole different blog which we will cover later.
So, the next time you are formulating a princess food, remember that not all princesses have to be high maintenance. Highly functional versatile fibers like Citri-Fi help improve the stability, texture and labeling of frozen foods.
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