Textural Properties of Bakery Products: A Review of Instrumental and Sensory Evaluation Studies

Bakery products are an important sector of the food industry globally and are part of the regular diets of many people. Texture encompasses many product characteristics and plays a pivotal role in consumer acceptance. This review focuses on the studies that evaluate textural properties in a set of bakery products, either using instrumental texture measurements or sensorial evaluations. A search was conducted on scientific databases, and selection was based on some eligibility criteria, resulting in a total of 133 articles about the textural properties of bakery products. Of these studies, the majority reported only instrumental analysis of texture (62 out of 133), and a minor number of studies reported only sensorial analyses (n = 14). Still, there was an expressive number of studies in which both methodologies were used to assess the texture of the bakery products (n = 57), i.e., instrumental measurement complemented with sensory evaluation. The results showed that most studies focused on bread (37%) and cakes (33%). With respect to instrumental texture analysis, most tests were TPA (texture profile analysis), and the most commonly used probe was a cylinder disc with a 75 mm diameter. Instrumental tests usually determine textural properties like hardness, cohesiveness, chewiness, and springiness. Regarding the sensorial analyses of texture, mostly descriptive tests were used (72%), particularly sensory profiling, with a lower number of studies performing discriminating (18%) of preference/acceptance tests (10%). In most cases, untrained panels were used, with a most common number of panelists equal to ten, and the most representative evaluated textural attributes were hardness, cohesiveness, chewiness, and springiness. In conclusion, this review provides insight into the methods used to assess the texture of bakery products and which characteristics of these products should be on focus. Furthermore, it was verified that both types of methodologies are complementary in evaluating texture for these types of food products.