摘要：Ascorbic acid (AA) is recognized as the main agent for improving the quality of flours (mainly of the weak flours), without sanitary restrictions. AA is an oxidizing agent for dough, but only after its conversion to dehydroascorbic acid. Reducing agent L-cysteine is often used to improve strong flours, characterized by an elastic and resistant gluten, with low extensibility. The aim of this study was to verify to what extent the concomitant supplementation of the dough with the two additives influences some quality indices of bread. The motivation for initiating this study was based on the possibility that the combined action of the two additives causes a redistribution in the dough of the main links that provide the gluten network functionality - covalent disulfide bonds. This redistribution may change the dough ability to retain the fermentation gases. The characterization of the used flour was made by determination of moisture, wet gluten content, gluten deformation index and gluten index calculation. For the resulting bread, the quality analyzed indices were loaf volume and crumb porosity. It was shown that the use of a combination of ascorbic acid and L-cysteine had a higher effect of improving bread quality, compared with the addition of a single additive, leading to an increase of loaf volume by 36% and 8% for porosity.
