Knowde Enhanced TDS
Identification & Functionality
- Ingredient Name
- Ingredient Origin
- Ingredients
- Milk, Milk Powder
- Technologies
Features & Benefits
- Food Ingredients Features
- Why is Roller/Drum Dried Milk Powder Better than the Alternatives?
Roller whole milk is desired by chocolate manufacturers for its high free fat content, which provides superior viscosity reduction and requires 2-3% less cocoa butter to maintain the handling properties during manufacture. The result is a milk chocolate product with a desirable mouth feel.
In addition to a high free fat content, manufacturers prefer roller/drum dried milk powder because of the sought-after taste it contributes to chocolate. The intense heating of the roller process begins the Maillard reaction, creating a pleasant cooked and caramelized flavor. This unique flavor profile offers characteristics unobtainable from other sources of milk powders.
Free Fat
Nearly all the milk fat in roller-processed milk powder is "free". Because of this, roller-processed whole milk provides superior viscosity reduction. In spray-processed whole milk, much of the milk fat is bound and does not interact freely.There are several factors that impact the degree of free fat in a milk powder, with the processing conditions being key to developing a powder with high free fat. Roller-dried has a characteristically high free fat level (70-90%) due to the shearing and scraping action as the film dries on the drum surface. Because of this, roller-dried is ideal for use in milk chocolate. Spray dried milk powder has significantly lower free fat levels (2-3%). In spray dried whole milk the milk fat is largely absorbed inside the lactose-protein structure of the dried milk particle.
One concern with powders containing a high free fat content is that fat oxidation leads to the development of off-flavor and a shorter shelf life. This situation is less of a concern for roller-dried powder where it is believed that maillard reaction products provide some anti-oxidant effects and hence enable storage lives of up to 12 months to be achieved without inert gas packaging.
Maillard Reaction
The maillard reaction describes a complex series of reactions between reducing sugars and amino groups on proteins, peptides and amino acids. The net effect of these reactions is the generation of colorful and flavorful compounds. Confectionery manufacturers prefer more intense caramel and Toffee flavors to assist in the flavoring of the confectionery product. Thus, for the manufacturer of confectionery ingredients, optimizing the level of maillard reaction can be beneficial. These complex chemical reactions are strongly influenced by the temperature and the duration of heating, the water content, the PH, and the ratio of reactants. The reactions take place in the roller-drying process of milk powder and in the chocolate crumb process.
- Why is Roller/Drum Dried Milk Powder more Functional than the Alternatives?
The beneficial rheological effect observed for roller-dried milk powder in comparison with spray dried powder has been attributed to both the higher level of free fat and the large particle shape of the roller dried powder.
Roller dried whole milk powder is more functional in chocolate than spray dried milk powder because approximately 90% of the milk fat is free as compared to 2-3% for spray dried. The net result of this difference is that milk chocolate made from spray dried milk powder requires the use of 2-3% more, expensive cocoa butter to maintain the handling properties during manufacturing and the mouth feel of the finished product. It is well known that confectionery manufacturers prefer the rheological benefits that roller-dried powders can provide over spray dried powders.
Powder that contains high free fat that is easily extractable and can interact directly with the cocoa butter in chocolate typically has been desired by milk chocolate manufacturers. The high free fat level results in reduced chocolate viscosity, making it easier to process the chocolate and providing an economy in cocoa butter savings as cocoa butter is usually added in the conch to control viscosity.Characteristics such as particle size, density, and internal structure influence the processing conditions needed to make chocolate. The size of particles in chocolate after refining (particle reduction) plays an important role in product viscosity. If particles are small, viscosity is high and additional fat is needed to coat these fine particles to reduce viscosity. Roller milk powder has large particles. The strength of the particles, their shape, and the amount of air included in void spaces (vacuole volume) has an impact on the shattering aspects of powder particles and influence chocolate properties (fluid rheology and mechanical properties of the solidified product). It has been verified that powders with high vacuole (air) volume led to high chocolate viscosity, due to the effect of breakage into small particles that must be covered with fat. In spray whole milk powder, particles are spherical and may be agglomerated. They contain bubbles or vacuoles which increase the porosity and reduce density. Roller-dried particles, on the other hand, are flakes without vacuoles.
Furthermore, the energy consumption is reduced in the conch when using roller because it runs wetter than with recipes using spray milk powder. The tempering temperature is lower when using roller because of the higher amount of crystallized lactose in roller milk.
Applications & Uses
- Markets
- Applications
- Food & Nutrition Applications
- Process
In the roller/drum dried milk powder process, pasteurized milk is applied to rotating, steam heated drums. The water evaporates when the milk contacts the hot drum surface. The drum continues to rotate and after less than one full revolution, a thin sheet of dried milk is removed from the drum by a scraper knife. The dried sheet of milk powder is conveyed away from the drums using a screw auger and then moved to a hammer mill where the powder is broken into small particles. The powder particles consist of flakes of irregular, angular shape with a wrinkled surface and rough edges. The roller dried particles are flakes without vacuoles; no air cells are perceptible within the particles. The length and width of the flakes depend on the thickness of the film. The roller process creates a unique low density powder.
Properties