ABSTRACT
Baking is the final and most important step in making bread and related products, e.g., cake and biscuit, and it can be defined as the process that transforms dough, basically made of flour, water, and leavening agents, to a food product with unique sensorial features by the application of heat inside an oven. In this sense, baking is considered as a heat transfer unit operation. Nevertheless, the application of heat generates mass transfer processes between the product and the oven ambient and inside the product. Consequently, baking is a simultaneous heat and mass transfer process from the transport phenomena point of view. Furthermore, if we consider the airflow characteristics of an oven and the transport by convection inside the product, the momentum transfer (i.e., fluid dynamics) should be taken into account as well. Other intrinsic features that increase the complexity of the transport phenomena underlying this unit operation are the formation of a porous structure and the volume change (expansion and shrinkage) in the product during baking.
