Bakery fats and margarines

In the past, there were only all purpose margarines or fats for the bakery applications.
In order to give more convenience and to get a better baking result, dedicated bakery margarines have been developed for the various applications:

• Cream
• Cake
• Biscuits
• Bread
• Short pastry
• Croissant or Danish pastry
• Puff pastry

For these applications not only the solid content of the fat (N-value) but also the consistency value (hardness) is important for a number of applications

This figure shows the relation between the solids and the hardness for various types of bakery margarines (C/N²=1). It is indicating that at a temperature of application of 20°C, the N20 of the pastry margarine should be about 40 in order to get the required consistency (C-value of about 1600 or St4.4 value of about 500). This means also that a pastry margarine, which will be used at 30°C, should have a similar hardness at 30°C, resulting in a N30 of about 40.

The minimal C20-value (hardness at 20°C) for a cream margarine should be about 300-400 in order to be able to pack as block of margarine; this means that the minimum N20 is about 20. If however a cream margarine is packed in a so called bag-in-box (liquid filled system) then the minimum solids at the critical distribution temperature can be lower like 13-15 %.

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