Many of you know that farmers receive a premium for growing high oleic soybeans. But did you know that is because end users place added value on this product due to its many uses? Do you know what its many uses are?
In a nutshell: Commercial bakers and fryers like high oleic soy because it’s a stable oil with a neutral flavor that performs well under high-heat conditions. Additionally, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandate to phase out partially hydrogenated oils by June 2018, many end users are looking for oil replacements without added trans fats.
And while high oleic may never make its way into your home kitchen, the baking industry, restaurants and food companies are discovering it’s the solution they’ve needed:High oleic soybean shortenings behave the same way as partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), creating a smooth transition for bakers:
- Longer shelf life, eliminating the need for additives
- Consistent performance
- And, of course, no trans fats.
Before many will make the switch, however, they want to be confident that there will be a supply to meet their demand. The soy industry needs to prove its commitment to its end users and continue increasing high oleic acres.
Baking a simple solution
Baking is equal parts art and science. The art is in the design and presentation of delicious treats, while the science includes complex chemical reactions needed to satisfy taste buds.
With terms like rebaudioside and erythritol being common chemistry vocabulary for bakers, enzyme interesterified (EIE) high oleic soybean oil shortening might just be the simplest mouthful contributing to mouthfuls of baked goods.
High oleic soybean oil is a truly functional solution to replace PHOs.
“As we in the baking industry all know, the FDA has banned PHOs. We’ve got to get them out of all of our foods by June 2018,” says United Soybean Board edible oils expert Frank Flider. “The soy checkoff is working to provide the food industry with U.S.-grown, functional, high-performing solutions.”
Replacing PHOs is a challenge for bakers, who have to go back to the drawing board in many cases to reformulate their recipes. High oleic soybean shortenings, however, work and feel like the PHO shortenings that bakers are used to.
“In terms of stability, functionality and structure, it performs very similarly to what bakers are used to working with,” Flider says.
Icing sculptor Becky Wortman, one of Dessert Professional Magazine’s Top 10 Cake Artists in North America for 2014, chimed in with her experiences using high oleic soybean oil shortening.
“For the sculptures I’ve been doing with other oils for the last three years, I have had problems. If you don’t have them at the right temperature or if you let them sit out, there will be cracking in the frosting,” she says. “High oleic soybean oil shortening is really flexible and lasts a long time. I’ve had sculptures sitting up for about a year.”
Typically, replacement oils act differently and have inferior workability compared to PHOs. Mitch Riavez, a fourth-generation certified master baker with 40 years’ experience in the industry, says interesterified high oleic soybean oil shortenings stand out among PHO replacements.
“High oleic soybean oil shortening is the first true drop-in I’ve encountered,” he says. “It feels the same and it has the same plasticity and feel in the hand. It’s very different than the other replacements I’ve encountered.”
Riavez is the national accounts director for Stratas Foods, a company working with USB through QUALISOY to study the functionality of high oleic soybean oil. Compared to the oils of commodity soybeans and other high oleic oilseed crops, high oleic soy has shown strong performance.
“Here’s what we’ve discovered: High oleic has a longer shelf life, less absorption and lower polymerization,” he says.
High oleic soybean oil and shortenings are available to bakers now, and the soybean industry is ramping up to meet increasing demand by doubling acreage over the next several years. Eventually, about 9.3 billion pounds of oil will be available for use by the food industry.
“To put that in perspective, the PHO volume in its heyday was at about 9 billion pounds,” Flider says. “So we’re going to be able to fully replace all the PHO that’s being taken out of the food system.”
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