How to make bread saltier without adding salt

Washington – Bread can be made pleasantly salty without any need of adding salt, a new research has revealed.

This can be achieved by changing the texture of the bread, so that it becomes less dense, scientists said.

They said that by making the pores larger, people have perceived bread as having saltier taste.

Peter Koehler and his colleagues have explained that every day, people in industrialized countries consume, on average, twice as much salt as recommended by the World Health Organization.

Much of that salt comes from bread, which for millennia has ranked as one of the world’s most ubiquitous foods.

Cutting dietary salt would reduce people’s risk for developing high blood pressure.

Researchers had tried different methods, such as using salt substitutes, but only to limited effect.

Studies on cheese and gels had shown that changing texture can make a product taste salty even if salt content is reduced, therefore Koehler’s team decided to see if it would work the same for bread.

To alter the texture of bread for the study, they baked bread using different proofing times, which meansletting the dough rise and longer proofingwould result in softer breads with larger pores.

The subjects in the study rated the fluffier bread with the longest proofing time as noticeably more salty, even though each bite actually contained less salt.

Therefore, the researchers concluded that appropriate modification of crumb texture thus leads to enhance saltiness, suggesting a new strategy for salt reduction in bread.

The research is published in the ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry