Pro Tip: Use hydrocolloids to bind or immobilize water, modify dough viscosity and viscoelasticity, and help maintain a more continuous dough structure during the freezing and thawing of dough.

Frozen dough technology gives bakeries the flexibility to centralize production, reduce labor at the point of sale and offer freshly baked products with greater consistency. The challenge is that freezing does more than stop fermentation. It changes the physical state and distribution of water and can progressively affect yeast activity, gluten functionality, starch behavior and final product quality.

As dough freezes, part of the water crystallizes as ice while solutes become concentrated in the remaining unfrozen phase. During storage, especially when temperatures fluctuate, small ice crystals can recrystallize into larger ones. This promotes water migration and can disrupt the gluten network and gluten-starch interactions. Recent literature emphasizes that the ability of gluten proteins and starch fractions to bind water is closely related to ice-crystal development and frozen-dough stability.¹ For industrial applications, this makes water management almost as important as gluten strength.

Hydrocolloids are receiving renewed interest because they can influence several parts of this system simultaneously. Their hydrophilic polymer chains bind or immobilize water, modify dough viscosity and viscoelasticity, and may help maintain a more continuous dough structure during freezing and thawing. Importantly, their effects are highly dependent on polymer type, concentration, flour quality and formula water.

Recent studies illustrate these interactions. He et al. evaluated xanthan gum together with xylanase and lipase in whole-wheat frozen bread dough.² Their optimized system, containing approximately 0.31% xanthan gum based on flour weight, improved specific volume and produced a softer product compared with untreated frozen dough. This is particularly relevant for whole wheat products, where bran competes for water and physically interferes with gluten development.

Carboxymethyl cellulose sodium, or CMC-Na, has also shown potential. Liu, et al., reported improvements in dough extensibility, gas-holding capacity and proofing tolerance in a frozen-dough steamed-bread system.³ These effects are important because deterioration in gas retention is a common reason frozen dough loses volume during storage. A dough may still ferment, but if the gluten network no longer retains carbon dioxide efficiently, proofing becomes slower and the final product becomes denser.

More recently, sanxan, a microbial polysaccharide distinct from xanthan gum, has been investigated. A 2026 study reported that sanxan reduced freeze-related damage to both gluten and starch and improved product quality, with the strongest response in that formulation at approximately 1.2%.⁴

For millers and bakers, the practical lesson is that hydrocolloids should not be treated as simple “water binders” or added without reformulating the dough. Water absorption should be re-optimized whenever the hydrocolloid system changes. Flour selection should also consider gluten quality, mixing tolerance, damaged starch and water absorption rather than protein percentage alone.

A practical industrial trial could compare a control with two or three hydrocolloid levels, optimize water for each treatment and monitor proof time, dough expansion, specific volume and crumb firmness over frozen storage. Stable freezing temperatures remain essential because no hydrocolloid can fully compensate for poor cold-chain control. Frozen-dough stability is ultimately a systems problem involving flour, water, yeast, ingredients, freezing and storage. Hydrocolloids can be valuable tools, but their greatest benefit comes when they are optimized within that complete system.

References

1. Jiang J, Yang J, Fan X, et al. Regulation of ice crystal growth in frozen dough: From the effect of gluten and starch fractions interaction on water binding—A review. Food Chemistry. 2025;476:143509.
2. He N, Xia M, Zhang X, et al. Quality attributes and functional properties of whole wheat bread baked from frozen dough with the addition of enzymes and hydrocolloids. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. 2024;104(4):1928-1941. doi:10.1002/jsfa.13077.
3. Liu S-F, Zhu K-X, Guo X-N. The effect of carboxymethyl cellulose sodium on the proofing tolerance and quality of frozen dough steamed bread. Foods. 2024;13(6):870. doi:10.3390/foods13060870.
4. Zhu H, Qian H, Li J, et al. Quality enhancement of frozen dough steamed bread by Sanxan: A study on multi-stage regulation of gluten-starch matrix. Food Hydrocolloids. 2026;171:111814. doi:10.1016/j.foodhyd.2025.111814.

Dr. Senay Simsek, serving as the department head, professor and dean’s chair in food science at Purdue University, possesses a background in cereal science, technology and wheat quality. Her goal is to foster collaboration between producers, scientists and food processors, optimizing research potential in this area.