Bread-making Qualities of Low-salt Dough with Soy Sauce

Abstract

In recent years, the issue of excessive salt intake has been raised and the need for low-sodium foods has increased. In this study, we prepared bread with soy sauce to reduce the salt content and investigated its quality characteristics. Since salt reduction deteriorates the physical properties of dough, extra strong flour was used for bread making. Using a dough (30 % salt reduction) in which the 1.4 % (baker’s percent) of total salt was replaced with an appropriate amount of soy sauce, low-salt white bread was produced by the optimal short-time baking method to improve the color of bread. This reduced-salt bread was significantly inferior in appearance, i.e., volume (specific loaf volume) and crumb color, staling and so on compared to the control bread (control) made from the dough with a normal amount (2 %) of salt. However, bread taste, saltiness and umami, showed equivalent or significantly higher values compared to the control. The saltiness and umami were also significantly higher than those of normal bread with 1.4 % salt. These results clarified that the addition of an appropriate amount of soy sauce has the effect of enhancing the saltiness of bread. The overall quality of this reduced-salt bread was inferior to that of the control; however, the difference between breads was not large. These results suggested that it is possible to produce low-salt white bread without significantly compromising bread quality by using an appropriate amount of soy sauce in bread-making.