Applications
It is used in the production of bakery products and mealy confectionery as a natural dough conditioner, a substitute for beet sugar, and a source of malt sugar – maltose – for the production of various food products.
Advantages of use
Due to its low glucose content, malt syrup does not crystallize during storage and is not very hygroscopic, which is important for the confectionery industry because it requires less added sugar. One kilogram of malt syrup replaces about 0.7 kilograms of sugar in terms of sweetness.
Malt syrup meets the requirements for sugar substitutes in the manufacture of baby food, since sucrose and glucose can be allergens. Malt syrup increases the quality of zavarnoy bread and is indispensable in the preparation of floury confectionery such as gingerbread, stollen, and pretzels.
Malt syrup is a ready-made sugary syrup. Its advantage over conventional sugar in the baking process is that it is ready to use and eliminates unnecessary operations for the preparation of invert syrup.
The clinic of therapeutic nutrition of the Research Institute of Nutrition on the basis of special studies (E.A. Obukhovsky. "Production of malt syrup," Pischepromizdat, Moscow, 1959) gave a high estimate of the nutritional qualities of malt syrup:
Bread baked with the addition of malt syrup to the dough is of higher quality: The bread crust is rougher and glossier than the control, the crumb is more elastic, the porosity is more even, and the bread is tastier, more fragrant, of greater volume, and stales more slowly.
The color of the crumb of bread baked from 30% milled flour, despite the relatively dark color of the malt syrup used in the study, changes little. It takes on the creamy hue that is usually the result of adding eggs to the dough.
The tests found that the greatest effect in preserving the freshness of bread is obtained by adding malt syrup. This is followed by glucose syrup, dextrin, and beet sugar.
