Sugar free cookie

Question

Hello everyone! We are trying to develop a no sugar added cookie recipe but there are some challenges when we try to scale up the recipe in our production. The basic recipe includes soft type wheat flour, palm oil, maltitol, sorbitol, water, cocoa powder, raising agents, etc. The baking step of the cookies cannot be done directly on the oven belt (it is not a solid steel belt). The production should be done on an open wire-mesh oven belt. The problem is that the cookies sink on the bottom of the belt and they cannot be detached without breaking. We have tried different recipe-related approaches (use of hard type wheat flour, wheat starch addition, pre-gelatinised starch addition, maltodextrin addition, changing sweeteners, decreasing water and fat content). None of these worked. At that point, I have to mention that the recipe works fine when the baking is done on a solid steel belt. However, we need to find a way to work with the wire-mesh belt. Do you have any other ideas? Thank you very much in advance!

Omar Schmidt · Accepted Answer

First of
all, try to balance the solids in the recipe. Check the humidity of the dough (it should be
around 15%). This results from the balance between the amount of water added
and solids (mainly flour, powdered sweeteners and cocoa). The percentage of
flour should be around 45 to 50%, sweeteners around 20% (maltitol, sucralose,
maltodextrin).

By the
description of the problem the dough may be too soft, this causes that in the
baking process, the piece of dough copies the shape of the oven mesh.

To avoid
this, consider the check aspects of the recipe and give the proper dough rest.
As for the oven profile, it seeks to initially give heat from below (1st third
of the oven), 2nd third distribute between bottom / top and last third more
heat from above..