Baking & Snack - July 2019 - 51

FORMULATION
Gums and Stabilizers

APPEAL
With water-binding abilities, gums and stabilizers can improve quality and shelf life for certain finishings.

by Charlotte Atchley
Icings and glazes are window dressing. Their very
presence tells consumers this baked good is an indulgence and draws them in to make the purchase. But
runny, sticky or smudged icing tells shoppers that a
treat or dessert is going to be messier than it's worth,
and a glaze that's gone too thin due to high temperatures won't have enough body and sheen to capture attention, much less make a sale. Gums and stabilizing
systems can prevent these and other scenarios from
happening and preserve these toppings as the baker intended for longer periods of time.
"Bakers risk losing shelf appeal if they don't use gums
and stabilizers," said Brent Galasso, West Coast sales,
Brolite Products. "People buy with their eyes first, especially when it comes to sweet goods. If the icing or glaze
is broken down, weeping, stuck to the packaging, sliding off the cake or the pastry, or bloomed, people may
choose a different item to purchase."
When it comes to icings and glazes, moisture and
temperature are at the center of everything: processing,
texture, consistency and shelf life, and even how they
hold up shape and interact with packaging. Gums and
stabilizer systems can improve upon all of these needs.
"Bakers will not have the same degree of control over
the texture of the icing without the use of gums," said
Troy Boutte, PhD, principal scientist, DuPont Nutrition
& Biosciences. "And glazes and icings made without
gums will be much more susceptible to quality issues
due to shipping and storage conditions."

However, there is a wealth of gums and stabilizing
systems for bakers to work with, but it can be difficult to
choose with a product's needs and processing and storage restrictions. It's helpful to understand how gums and
stabilizers bring about consistent icings and glazes that
hold up on the shelf.

Bakers need to know their
final product's needs and
processing parameters
when choosing gums or
stablizing systems for
icings and glazes.
©brent Hofacker - stock.adobe.com

Creating the bind
The power of gums is that they bind water. This power
comes into play in a multitude of ways. By binding water, gums help with shelf life, freeze-thaw stability and
improve icings and glazes' texture and quality.
"By foregoing the use of hydrocolloids in icing and
glaze formulations, developers run the risk of increased
defects to their finished goods," said Anna McKinney,
food technologist, TIC Gums. "This could appear in a
number of ways, such as sugar crystallization, glaze cracking, slower set times and more syneresis during shelf life."
When it comes to shelf life, controlling moisture is critical because it's a major contributor to staling. By binding up
the free moisture in the icing, gums prevent it from moving
around. "Gums help restrict the water migration between
the icing or glaze and the product, whether that's a cake,
snack cake, pastry or Danish," said Marissa Stubbs, bakery
account manager, Agropur. "This allows the carrier, like
a cake, to maintain the desired product texture and food
safety by keeping the water where it belongs to prevent microbial growth."
Stabilizing moisture movement is also critical for

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