Jenni Spinner: Consumers these days are more particular and less willing to compromise than ever, it seems. Can you talk in general about some of these demands and how bakery producers are challenged to meet them?

Maria Brandt: Consumers today have changed their expectations in relation to quality, shelf life, and labelling transparency. Kerry recognizes that today’s consumers view cleaner labels as an expectation rather than a trend. Consumers are demanding products that are perceived as more natural and are unwilling to compromise on freshly baked quality. This creates a significant challenge for bakers who must ensure that their products maintain good texture, softness, and resilience for longer periods without relying on traditional additives. Kerry’s enzyme solutions, perceived as label-friendly, help manufacturers bridge this gap. By utilizing Kerry’s advanced technologies, bakeries can achieve textural freshness and softness over shelf life while delivering the premium mouthfeel and crumb structure that keeps consumers coming back for more.

JS: Let’s dive into two interests that sort of conflict: the desire for clean-label products, and the need for long shelf life. Could you please talk about the ways in which bakers might struggle with satisfying both counts, while still keeping costs manageable?

MB: Bakeries can often struggle to balance label-friendly expectations and performance of baked goods over an extended shelf life, while keeping costs down, especially with the volatile pricing of certain raw materials. Traditional reformulations can compromise product quality, process efficiency, or require costly new ingredients, which can increase pressure on production and the bottom line. 

Traditional additives would help alleviate typical freshness and performance challenges in baked goods; therefore, removing them without a functional alternative would lead to faster staling, lower volumes, increased waste, and manufacturing inefficiencies.

Kerry’s enzymes can minimize or replace high-cost ingredients and conventional dough improvers by strengthening dough structure, improving tolerance, and reducing rate of staling of shelf life. Enzymes meet consumers’ label-friendly expectations while reliably delivering textural freshness, quality, and performance, over shelf life, in a range of bakery products.

For example, Kerry’s Biobake Fresh Rich, is a premium anti-staling amylase that performs optimally in high sucrose recipes. This enzyme delivers significant improvements in softness, moistness perception and overall freshness over shelf life in applications such as muffins, sponge cakes. and sweet pancakes, etc. 

JS: Can you tell us a little bit more about the advanced enzyme solutions Kerry offers?

MB: Kerry offers a comprehensive portfolio of targeted enzyme solutions designed to meet specific operational and bakery performance targets. Kerry’s Biobake Fresh portfolio of enzymes targets freshness characteristics in bakery, e.g., texture. Freshness enzymes reduce starch retrogradation and staling in a range of bakery products, helping achieve food waste targets.

Enzymes not only deliver freshness but can mitigate cost-volatile raw materials such as vital wheat gluten and eggs, at scale, helping to maintain profit margins. For example, Kerry’s Biobake EgR allows bakeries to reduce egg content by up to 30% without sacrificing taste, texture, volume, or crumb structure. The benefits are not only significant cost savings, but also reduced storage, transport, carbon footprint, and animal welfare benefits.

Kerry’s organic-suitable Biobake GTNCA reduces gluten and raises profits, without compromising dough performance. This technology enables up to 100% replacement of vital wheat gluten in yeast-raised bread, while maintaining volume, texture, crumb structure, and machinability.

Biobake Fresh RES is specifically designed for buns and rolls consumed through foodservice channels. It is used to improve texture, appearance, and eating experience with easier dough handling and processability, with trial data showcasing a 40% reduction in bun firmness and 55% increase in resilience v’s negative control, after seven days.

Enzyme technologies act as powerful catalysts, enabling commercial bakers to unlock profitability, process efficiencies, better product performance, and batch-to-batch consistency without the need for traditional additives, delivering label-friendly quality and freshness. Enzymes help bakeries protect margins, mitigate costs, and maintain consumer loyalty by delaying staling and reducing waste.

JS: What should they know about introducing those ingredients into new or existing bakery formulations—are there any considerations regarding taste/texture of the final product, dough handling during processing, etc.?

MB: Introducing Kerry’s enzyme technologies into production can optimize dough strength, rheology, and resilience for more predictable and consistent manufacturing. Bakeries should know that these solutions can also improve dough handling by reducing stickiness and increasing tolerance to raw material variability. This minimizes downtime and can even reduce fermentation times and production water usage.

As enzymes are substrate-specific biocatalysts that are typically inactivated during the baking process, they do not negatively impact the final product taste or texture. Enzymes enable a superior final product that meets quality and labelling expectations of the modern consumer, while maintaining the same great taste.

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