Filippo Gambella

Comparison between traditional and industrial plants used for production of "Carasau" bread and evaluation of final products

Carasau is a typical Sardinian bread. In the last 10 years the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME), decree of the Italian Ministry of Industry and Commerce of 18 September 1997, and European Commission 2003/361/CE)( Raccomandazione della Commissione, 1996), have tried to improve different aspects of the carasau production process. The small size of the bakeries is one of the most important factors. This makes it difficult to transform a traditional process into an industrial one, because of a large number of operations involved in the production of this bread. In the present work we compared the working of one traditional and one semi-industrial carasau production plant. We investigated the differences in equipment, power consumption, and certain chemical and physical parameters of the traditional products. Daily capacity in the traditional bakery was reached after 9.97 h, and in the semi-industrial plant after 7.98 h. Cutting and separating were the most time-consuming operations in both types of plants. In the semi-industrial plant, 41% of the total time was used for these operations, and in the traditional plant it was 52%. At the end of fermentation there were no statistically significant differences in the acidity of the bread, the pH or the dry matter content in the two plants, and the adoption of a semi-industrial system did not modify the chemical and physical characteristics of the final product, with the exception of water and antioxidant activity.