Texture profile analysis, together with colour, alkaline water retention capacity and crumb moisture correlated well with
bread ageing and did not significantly vary among packaging types.
The selection of materials with lower thickness for the packaging of an industrial bread allows to maintain the shelf life
standards and would carry several advantages for the producer,such as the reduction of packaging volumes (with improve-
ments in the in-house materials stocks management) and costs,and in terms of sustainability of the whole life cycle of the
product.
In the case study, the comparative shelf life test highlighted that it is possible to reduce packaging by about 20%
compared to the conventional packaging system.
Results confirm the tendency, by small and medium food industries,to overpack goods. Moreover, the investigated quality indices of industrial durum-wheat bread did not change significantly after 21 days and until 103 days of storage (labelled ‘‘best-before’’ date is 40 days from production), and this could encourage food producers to abandon their prudential approach to shelf life in favour of an empirical approach, which would supply reliable data on the real product quality maintenance.