Processed
Bacterial Alpha-Amylase
A tier
Bacterial alpha-amylase, typically from Bacillus species, keeps working at mash and cooker temperatures that shut fungal enzymes down. Starch processors, brewers of adjunct-heavy beers, and some fruit-puree plants use it to thin a boiling starch slurry into a pumpable dextrin soup. In a loaf it is a specialist, not a default: residual activity into the bake can leave a gummy, collapsing crumb. Specify thermostable or intermediate-stability strains to match the kettle. The powder or liquid should be clean-smelling and standardised in dextrinising units. Do not tip a bacterial grade into a sandwich-bread improver that was written for fungal amylase—the crumb will not forgive you.
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Characteristics
Preparations
Traits
History
Industrial starch hydrolysis adopted heat-stable Bacillus amylases for liquefaction.
Adjunct brewing used bacterial alpha-amylase to convert unmalted cereal cooks.
Thermostable mutants allowed jet-cooker liquefaction at still higher temperatures.
Fruit-puree and bakery-filling plants used bacterial amylase to control viscosity after pasteurisation.