Production of bread crumbs by infrared-assisted microwave drying

This study is aimed to investigate the possibility of using infrared-assisted microwave drying for production of bread crumbs and to determine drying conditions in halogen lamp-microwave combination oven to produce bread crumbs with the highest quality. Bread crumb dough were dried from about 40.9 to 8% moisture content by conventional, microwave, infrared and infrared-assisted microwave drying separately and in combinations. Halogen lamp and microwave power levels of 30, 50 and 70% were used. Percent reduction in the drying time were 80.2-94.0 for infrared, 96.5-98.6 for microwave and 96.8-98.6 for infrared-assisted microwave drying. Delta E values were lower in microwave drying and higher in infrared drying. Infrared-assisted microwave dried crumbs generally had similar color values with the conventionally dried ones. Effect of power on color change was not observed. All drying methods were found to be effective in increasing water binding capacity, which increased with microwave power in microwave drying but the influence of halogen lamp power was not seen in infrared drying. At fixed microwave (halogen lamp) powers increase of halogen lamp (microwave) power did not affect the water binding capacity in infrared-assisted microwave drying.