The traditional pastel de nata misses the joke hours after being cooked. The chemical explains what happens. When the pie comes out of the oven, the pastry is crisp and warm cream. But as it cools, water exist in which infiltrates the cream puff pastry, softening it. Even if you heat in the microwave again, the result is a soft pastel. Now the company Mealfood and a team of scientists from the University of Aveiro teamed up to invent a pastel de nata already cooked warming in 60 seconds in the microwave and still crunchy, announced on Wednesday the University of Aveiro in a statement.
The company wants its new cream puffs Eatly Portuguese supermarket shelves by the middle of 2015. And at the same time has come to Angola, Mozambique, Macau and England.
“It was an idea that arose more than two years,” says António Santos, a director of Mealfood, the PUBLIC. The company with five employees, was born in late 2012 and is installed in the municipality of Hostel-a-Velha, district of Aveiro. The aim was to use the knowledge Francisco Santos, pastry chef with international experience and one of the directors of the company to start producing crayons.
Today, there are cream puffs raw or semi-raw for sale consumers. To be ready, the cakes have to be cooked in the oven for 20 minutes to more than 200 degrees. As this market was already filled, the leaders of Mealfood chose to bet on a more direct product: a crayon that was already cooked, then frozen and that was that when it came to the hands of the people, had to be heated in the microwave only in the end. The end result would be a pastel de nata “with the same freshness” than a fresh out of the oven, in the words of António Santos, ready in just a minute.
To this, the businessmen decided to contact Manuel António Coimbra, food biochemist at the University of Aveiro. “It was a challenge,” says the scientist to the PUBLIC. “The company wanted a custard tart with the same physical, sensory and visual features,” he explains. To achieve this goal, the researchers used a polysaccharide, which is a complex carbohydrate. The polysaccharide used is hydroxypropylmethylcellulose (HPMC), which is hydrophobic. Ie do not let the water approaching. And that is why it makes more waterproof puff pastry, not letting water seep and prevents the dough softens.
The HPMC is already a food additive used in other foods. Besides having put on the puff pastry, the scientists also used the HPMC cream. Thus, when the pie is heated in the microwave, the water does not boil the cream and not ripping film of cream, which is so characteristic of the pastel de nata.
The investigation was conducted over six months . “It took many tests, it took many hours,” says António Santos, who did not want to reveal how much that cost the investment company. The work was done jointly by the University of Aveiro team, which included researchers Rita Bastos and Elisabete Coelho, pastry and Francisco Santos.
various polysaccharides were tested at various concentrations, to obtain the this result. “It’s a learning among those who know do pastel and those who have the science and theory behind” argues turn Manuel António Coimbra.
The pastel still has a nutritional benefit, as it takes less fat therefore is less caloric. Instead of 230-240 calories of crayons conventional cream, this is 184.
The new product is now waiting for an English patent, which has been requested. However, there is a packaging design that takes six pastels. When they reach the market, you only need to heat them and eat them – preferably with cinnamon.
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