Company: Cargill

Website: www.cargill.com

Ingredient Snapshot: Bakery producers who create those tempting cookies, pies and donuts know that finding a single shortening that meets the range of challenges they face can be difficult. Cargill’s newest palm shortening line, PalmAgility, is designed to fill that gap.

“Bakery customers face a variety of challenges with standard palm shortenings from transportation to storage to performance. PalmAgility’s virtue is that it is a single solution that helps address these multiple bakery performance needs,” says John Satumba, R&D director for Cargill’s global edible oils business in North America.<

Cargill’s team, which includes more than 1500 food scientists, developed the proprietary PalmAgility formulation, which was then tested for performance in pies, donuts, cookies and crème fillings at the company’s state-of-the-art Food Innovation Center.

PalmAgility helps to reduce brittleness across a wider temperature range, allowing customers to store it easily without sacrificing workability or texture. This also helps address issues that can develop in transportation due to fluctuations in outdoor temperatures, a variable outside of customer’s control.

PalmAgility’s smoother and creamier texture than standard palm oil shortenings aids in faster mixing time and better incorporation of ingredients, both of which are easier on baking equipment. A faster crystallization rate also helps to increase control, and reduce the spread, of fillings.

Palm oil shortening has become one of the preferred replacement products for bakery producers given U.S. regulatory restrictions on the use of partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) in food. Bakery producers have been searching for shortening solutions without PHOs that can mimic previously provided performance aspects.

The new shortening will initially be available in four product lines:

• PalmAgility 204 All-Purpose Shortening: an all-around high performing bakery product which works well in a variety of applications including cookies and pies;
• PalmAgility 204 Filling Fat Shortening: specifically formulated for crème fillings for sandwich cookies; and
• PalmAgility 213 and 217 Donut Frying Shortenings: which offers a faster set up on the donut surface and reduced oil weeping over 24 hours compared to standard palm-based donut fry shortenings.

“Increasingly, bakery producers want customized solutions that address their specific challenges such as temperature tolerance or melting point,” says Satumba. “We’ll continue our research and development efforts to expand our PalmAgility line to better meet those needs.”