Author:

Abstract:

Cake is typically made with 4 main ingredients: flour, egg, sugar and margarine. Although cake is a traditional baking product, the specific functionality of its ingredients is not fully understood. Therefore, the main purpose of my PhD thesis is to gain more insight in the functionality of egg white and egg yolk in cake making. Eggs consist of egg white and egg yolk and the shell. Egg white contains a lot of water (88%) and proteins (11%) and has important foaming and coagulating properties. Egg yolk contains 50% water, 33% lipids and 16% proteins. Egg yolk has emulsifying and coagulating properties. In order to increase the insight, first, the contribution of the different protein fractions (egg white, egg yolk and wheat flour) to the protein network formation is studied. Therefore, 15N-labelled eggs are used in cake making and the extractability of proteins in different media is evaluated during baking. Secondly, egg yolk is fractionated into plasma and granules. The functionality in cake making is evaluated for both fractions and related to their composition and properties.