Hardness of caramel biscuits

Question

Dear Members,I ask for your advice, how can I reach the required structure of caramel biscuit. I just start the baking of caramel biscuit, but the biscuits are to hard and  not enoug high. I use natrium-hydrogecarbonat as reasing agent, I increased its dosage as well, but the baked caramel biscuits are not enogh fine structure, well to hard, well hard to bite. Could you please give me some advice and send me information, where is the proper place to get relevant technological description for baking caramel biscuit.Thank you all in advance.Márton

Andrew Hughes · Answer

Hi Marton

The hardness,
shape and size of Caramel biscuits depends on balancing the ingredients and the
processing method correctly with sugars, fats and raising
agents playing and important role.

The natrium-hydrogecarbonat you mention is called Sodium
Bicarbonate in English and this can be used on its own or with a small amount
of acid. As well as producing CO2 it changes the biscuit pH to alkaline darkening
the biscuit crumb colour during baking. However when Sodium Bicarbonate is used
on its own it doesn’t produce as much CO2 as when it is mixed with an acid and the
biscuit texture may be dense and hard (not expanded). In this situation an
additional raising agent could be added such as Ammonium Bicarbonate which is a
very efficient raising agent producing a lot of CO2 and this should increase
the biscuit size and open up the texture.

The dough mixing method and the particle size of the sugar
can also affect the hardness of the biscuit with fully dissolved sugar giving a
hard brittle texture. To prevent the sugar fully dissolving a balance of fine
and course particle sugar is often used together with a reduced cream up stage
in the mixing process. I hope this helpsAndrew Hughes