ABSTRACT
Several thousand years ago, dough was already being fermented to produce loaves and similar bakery products with a porous crumb, a significant step forward in baking methods (1,2). This method of baking was based on gas formation caused by fermentation, which produced doughs with a frothy consistency. Figure 1 shows that fermentation is the key process for bread production. As pointed out in Table 1, the leavening of dough by gas formation is accompanied by microbial and biochemical conversion of dough constituents, which results from the action of microorganisms added to the dough and/or which proliferate in the dough and enzymes present in the flour. These conversions require specific conditions from which the working parameters and the technical realization of the fermentation processes result.
