Estudos de tempo de vida útil de bolos individuais em frasco em diferentes condições de conservação

Abstract

Shelf life is the period of time during which the food retains all its characteristics, previously defined and suitable for the way it is consumed from the point of view of safety and quality. Thus, the purpose of this work focused on the determination of the shelf life of refrigerated and frozen bakery products in the company Artiframi and consequent determination of which is the most favorable conservation method in terms of longer shelf life. The products studied were cakes packaged in glass jars, most in layers, with different filings, in individual doses. Before determining the lifetime, the flowchart and respective hazard analysis were developed. Then, physicochemical analyzes were performed on each of the cake components, more specifically the water activity and pH. With these values determined, the ComBase platform was used to use predictive microbiology and assess the possibility of microbial growth in the components. After this prediction, microbiological analyzes were carried out on total microorganisms and Enterobacteriaceaes on refrigerated cakes to prove the results obtained with the predictive microbiology. As these are pastry products, sensory characteristics are of great importance and, for this reason, sensory analyzes were carried out, using the hedonic scale, on cakes refrigerated for 7 days and frozen for 90 days. Results were analyzed using the DATAtab platform and ANOVA with repeated measures. It was determined that freezing would be the best option for the vast majority of cakes, except for the raspberry chocolate cake which showed better results with refrigerated storage for 3 days and the apple crumble cake to which it is suggested to make a change of production process and/or ingredients due to low sensory evaluation, even on the day of production.

Date of Award	28 Dec 2022
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Conceição Hogg (Supervisor)