Stability of Alternaria toxins during bread-making process

During bread production, present mycotoxins can be reduced, transformed, and/or bound or released. In general, during bread production, mycotoxins might be affected by the presence of certain ingredients and/or additives and by the fermentation conditions, followed by the baking process. However, there are no available data on the stability and behavior of Alternaria toxins during bread-making process in real conditions. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of dough fermentation and baking processes on the behavior of tenuazonic acid (TeA), alternariol (AOH) and alternariol monomethyl ether (AME). For this purpose, spiked white wheat flour (100 μg/kg of each TeA, AOH, and AME in flour), 2.5% baker's yeast, 2.0% salt and 58% water calculated on flour basis were used as raw materials in a micro-scale baking test. Spiked wheat dough was fermented for 60 min at 37 °C, and then divided into 15 g pieces, molded by hand, and proofed for 50 min at 37 °C. Finally, the proofed dough was baked for 8 min at 250 °C. At each point (0, 60 and 110 min) the dough samples were taken, frozen, lyophilized, ground, and stored until further analysis. Bread samples were taken after cooling and the same procedure was applied to it as well. To study the fate of TeA, AOH and AME during bread production, validated method of high performance liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was used. The content of TeA and AME in bread was at the same level as in the raw material, although in the dough during fermentation, reductions of TeA by 29.2% and increase amount of AME by 13.8% were noted, compared to their content in dough after kneading (0 min). The content of AOH in dough after final proof was reduced by 31.8%, while in bread, its content was reduced by 34.8% compared to its content in dough after kneading (0 min).