Leavening ingredients and leavening aides are important ingredients that help consistently create the textural qualities of various baked goods. And like every ingredient segment within bakery, leavening agents are subject to ongoing shopper trends.
“The main trends impacting chemical leavening are clean label and nutritional concerns,” says Troy Boutte, Ph.D., vice president innovation, AB Mauri North America, St. Louis. “Leavening agents for clean-label baked goods go back to what is available in your kitchen which is sodium bicarbonate and tartaric acid (cream of tartar). Nutritional concerns can also be a factor in the choice of leavener and in some cases these concerns are interconnected with clean label concerns. People with certain health concerns may prefer to use leaveners with no sodium, phosphates, or aluminum. Leavening agents can be formulated to meet these requirements. Each of these specialized leavening agents will have slightly different functions, flavors and pricing.”