People often ask us how our donuts, which are free from so many allergens, taste so bloody good? Well, if we told you we’d have to kill you but there is a team of food scientists out there who know all our tasty little secrets! To debunk a bit of the mystery, we’ve chatted to Food Scientist Trevor Gibbs from Brisbane based food manufacturing business Janbak about the creation of OMG Decadent Donuts.
Food science is defined by Australian Institute of Food Science Technology, as”…the discipline in which the engineering, biological, and physical sciences are used to study the nature of foods, the causes of deterioration, the principles underlying food processing, and the improvement of foods for the consuming public.”https://www.aifst.asn.au/What-is-Food-Science
Sounds kind of nerdy but it’s really very cool what these smart people do to ensure manufactured food is up to scratch. Not to discourage invention test master chefs out there, in fact Trevor himself says “passion for working with food is where it all begins”, but there is a lot involved in the development of food products including food chemistry, food microbiology, food engineering, quality assurance, innovation, nutrition and regulation.
In short food scientists develop, tweak and batch test the hell out of products to make sure they taste good and are in tippy top shape, performing as they should in a variety of conditions. For instance, OMG Decadent Donuts need to withstand a variety of environmental elements being sold in markets across Australia as well as inside shopping centres and delivered to your door. (You’re welcome) In developing the product, Trevor had to consider this and in doing so needed to make a few tweaks to the product to ensure OMG donuts are more robust than your standard donut! (How cool are our donuts).
It took months to get OMG donuts just right with business founders, David and Andrew working closely with Trevor to perfect the balance of performance, taste and quality. Ironically Trevor is from a flour milling background, but these days often finds himself working with alternate grains and starches as consumer demand for gluten free, vegan products rises (mind the pun).
Trevor comments: “I have done a lot of the product development at Janbak, applying my years of experience from the flour milling industry. The gluten free range of foods now available to consumers has improved dramatically over the years. The key to getting it right when it comes to gluten free, is understanding how to work with different starches and gluten free products to get the best results. It’s really about applying the combinations of ingredients to get the balance right.”
Surely one of the best parts of a food scientists’ job is the taste testing with each product requiring a batch test followed by a taste test. How good! Trevor concurs saying “this is certainly a highlight of the job.” Our donuts are put through the ringer with Janbak’s Production Team sending a 0.5kg bake test each time they are produced to ensure it performs! It is high pressure being a gluten free, vegan donut these days! If the quality is low then Trevor is in luck, ordering another batch to bake test again (we are onto you Trevor.)
But in all seriousness, the contamination process is taken very seriously throughout the manufacturing process, Trevor’s team controls the scheduling of the product with each batch swabbed to ensure there is no contamination and that the donuts are free from gluten, egg, nuts, dairy, sulphites, and yeast, as well as ticking the Halal and Kosher boxes. Yikes sounds exhausting. At least us simples just get to enjoy the utterly light and fluffy finished donut our only conundrum, deciding which dusting of sugar to choose.
