Biological Approaches to Improve Shelf-Life of Baked Goods

Food safety is a scientific process of food management involving three disciplines—preparation, handling, and storage of food. Food safety is essential; firstly, it provides food security to the communities. Secondly, it ensures the health of the consumer. Thirdly, in the rapidly growing packaged food marketing chain, food safety is important for distributing healthy and hygienic food. Food safety enables food availability—both physical and physiological—and constitutes an exclusive third pillar of food security. Nonetheless, food safety preserves the nutritional value for dietary needs as well as ensures cultural and ethical food choice of a community. Out of the three disciplines of food safety, the handling and the storage/preservation are very important. They ensure availability, access, utilization, and stability of the food, besides minimizing the wastage of food. Proper handling and preservation are essential for nutrition and taste of the food as well. One such food preservation method is baking. This chapter covers biological approaches to improve the shelf-life of baked goods. It sheds light on various methods of rack-life improvement using bio-preservatives and essential oils, microbial fermentation, plant and animal derivatives, etc. as ingredients and processing steps, and discusses innovative technologies in packaging and their effects. It also covers classical and modern methods of food preservation. Different classical methods of food preservation for shelf-life improvement are discussed in detail. In modern methods, High-Pressure Processing (HPP), Pulsed Electric Field (PEF), Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP), Ozone Treatment, Edible Coatings, Nanotechnological solutions, Ultraviolet (UV) Light Treatment, Cold Plasma Technology, Enzyme Inhibitors, and Smart Packaging (Modified Atmosphere Packaging), etc. are covered. The biodegradability of polymers in packaging and environmental concerns are assessed. Efforts are made to highlight the connection of bakery products, their shelf-life, and the essentiality of biobased preservation technologies.