It is very common for teachers and speakers at workshops and seminars to hear the question, “What are the rules for balancing cake [or other product,] formulas?” The truth is, there are no hard and fast principles that can be applied to formula design. Many authors have published guidelines for “formula balance” which may have some slight merit in specific situations, but these rules can be very misleading if uncritically applied. A selection of guidelines that have often been used in formulation studies of standard type of layer cakes will be given below, but the reader should understand that slavish adherence to these implied limitations is not good practice. The “rules” may have worked fairly well as very general guidelines in the past, but as new ingredients and new processing methods are developed, they tend to become outmoded. In any case, they are not laws of nature and should not be allowed to hamper creativity in new product development.
PPREMIXING:
In bakery processes, there are some situations in which it is desirable or necessary to have a premix of part or all of the ingredients. A bakery “premix” is a combination of ingredients that must undergo additional completed. Although a bakery premix often contains only a few of the total ingredients or premixes-before processing is completed. Although a bakery premix often contains only a few of the total ingredients required to complete a product, it may contain all of them or all different objectives, some of which will be reviewed below.