Journal of Cereal Science 83 (2018) 25–31

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Cereal Science

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jcs

Effect of deep fat and hot air frying on doughnuts physical properties and T
kinetic of crust formation
Arash Ghaitaranpoura, Arash Koochekia,∗, Mohebbat Mohebbia, Michael O. Ngadib
a
Department of Food Science and Technology, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
b
Department of Bioresource Engineering, McGill University, 21111 Lakeshore Rd, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC H9X3V9, Canada

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The effects of temperature (150, 165 and 180 °C) and frying method (deep fat and hot air frying methods) on the
Doughnut kinetic of doughnut's crust formation and also crust features were investigated in this study. Results revealed that
Kinetics at high frying temperatures in deep fat frying method, a higher percentage of doughnut surfaces were covered
Crust formation with crust, while at low temperatures using hot-air frying process, the crust percentage of the doughnut was
Deep fat frying
higher compared with those of other frying method. By decreasing the temperature of fryer, the difference
Hot air frying
between frying time of two methods reduced gradually in a manner that at 150 °C the frying time was the same
for both methods. Formation of doughnut's crust in deep fat frying method started from its lower and lateral
parts but for hot air method, the formation began from the upper surface. Doughnut's crust formation during
deep fat frying was more dependent on temperature than that of hot air fried ones. Hot air frying of doughnut
reduced crust roughness and created a smoother surface compared to the deep fat fried samples. Decreasing the
frying temperature for both methods increased the crust roughness. The results of this research permit a better
understanding of crust formation procedure in deep fat and hot air frying process.

1. Introduction
The process of crust formation during frying of doughnut is an im-
portant subject because the golden color of doughnut's crust is one of
the features that increases customer's attraction to this popular product.
Among various characteristics of foods, visual features are the most
important characteristics which are often linked to the quality of
foodstuff. The color of crust is the first quality feature which is eval-
uated by consumers (León et al., 2006) and has an effect on acceptance
of food before it is consumed.
The golden color of crust relates to the nonenzymatic browning
reactions and changes in sugar molecules (Purlis and Salvadori., 2007).
Low moisture content and high temperature facilitate these reactions.
Crust color, roughness, thickness and texture are functions of different
factors like food composition, oil quality, frying time and temperature
(Altamirano-Fortoul et al., 2012; Gallagher et al., 2003). High tem-
perature of oil during frying leads to a rapid increase in surface tem-
perature of the product and therefore the moisture evaporation.
Moisture evaporation rate is reduced as the frying process progresses.
Thus, frying process results in a moving boundary layer that separates
the inside part from the outside surface of product which gradually turn
to crust region (Ngadi et al., 1997).
The crust formation and its development not only changes the heat
transfer; but there are many evidences to show that the structural
features of crust is the most important factor which affects the mass
transfer during frying (Moreno et al., 2010; Thanatuksornet al., 2005).
One of these characteristics is the crust surface roughness which greatly
affects the product's oil uptake.
Food processing methods, particularly those using heating phase,
has a great impact on the product features including crust formation
(Besbes et al., 2013). Hot air frying is one of the modern methods be-
sides other methods used to produce fried food with less amount of oil
while maintaining their appearance and taste similar to deep fat fried
foods (Arafat, 2014; Lee et al., 2012).
In this new method, oil is sprayed on the surface of food and instead
of being immersed in the hot oil, hot air is used as the heat transfer
medium. In a kitchen air fryer, the hot air has direct contact with food
and the oil droplets on its surface (Teruel et al., 2015). Frying with hot
air has some advantages such as reduction in oil absorption, keeping the
oil soluble vitamins through omission of oil as heat transporter fluid,
and improvement of product quality since the issues of oil deterioration
are avoided (Heredia et al., 2014). Oil spraying on products creates
texture, color and flavor similar to those of conventional deep-fat fried
foods (Andrés et al., 2013).

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: koocheki@um.ac.ir (A. Koocheki).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcs.2018.07.006
Received 6 March 2018; Received in revised form 2 June 2018; Accepted 17 July 2018
Available online 19 July 2018
0733-5210/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A. Ghaitaranpour et al.
Crust uniformity is another important feature of food products
(Volpini-Rapina et al., 2012). The high uniformity of crust usually
shows that the amount of heat absorption in different parts of the
product is similar during processing; hence, it is important to in-
vestigate the characteristics of doughnut crust especially for designing a
healthier frying process.
Digital image processing is one of the new methods used for mon-
itoring the physical changes of food products throughout processing
which has been used frequently during recent years (Castro et al.,
2017). This method is based on capturing images of foods and then
analyzing the images to detect the different characteristics related to
the image features and to achieve various properties of the products
more quickly (Ghaitaranpour et al., 2017, 2018). Mohd Jusoh et al.
(2009) used a simple method, based on digital image capturing and the
Lab color space to predict bread crust thickness from the color mea-
surements of bread surface.
Thanatuksorn et al. (2005) measured the surface roughness of a
fried food model using fractal analysis and stated that the increase in
surface roughness at various stages of frying led to an increase in oil
absorption. Morenoet al. (2010) also examined the effect of surface
crust roughness on the amount of oil absorbed by fried dough and
potato flakes using image analysis techniques. The authors used scan-
ning laser microscope to take photos of the products and the surface
properties of the crust was described by fractal analysis method. Results
showed that there was a correlation between the surface roughness of
food in various stages of frying and the amount of oil absorbed by the
product.
Although crust formation and its structure has direct effect on
doughnut's consumer acceptability and oil absorption, there is currently
a lack of knowledge on the development of its crust during frying,
specially for the new method of hot air frying. Therefore, the main
objective of this study was to investigate the kinetics of crust formation
and its properties during air frying of doughnut and to conduct a
comparative study of crust development during air frying and con-
ventional deep-fat frying.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Dough production and proof process
Doughnut ingredients namely whole wheat flour (Compliments,
Sobeys Inc, ON, Canada), salt, milk powder (Compliments, Sobeys Inc,
ON, Canada), vanilla (Pure Vanilla Extract, clubhouse, ON, Canada),
citric acid and eggs were purchased from a local supermarket. Other
ingredients included xanthan (TIC Gums, Inc., Riverside, Md., U.S.A.)
gluten (Sigma-Aldrich, ON, Canada), dried yeast (Fleischmann's
rapidRise, ACH Food Companies, TN, U.S.A.), vegetable oil (Canola
Harvest, Richardson International, QC, Canada) and backing powder
(Compliments, Sobeys Inc, ON, Canada) was used in this study.
Wheat flour (182.5 g), salt (1.8 g), milk powder (6.1 g), sugar
(7.3 g), xanthan gum (1.7 g), citric acid (0.1 g), vanilla (1.7 g), gluten
(0.6 g) and baking powder (1.7 g) were mixed and sieved twice. Other
ingredients namely oil (12.2 g), yeast (9.8 g) and eggs (9.8 g) were
added to water (66.1 g) and stirred for one minute, then mixed dry
ingredients were added to liquid ingredients and the combination was
continually kneaded with a mixer (HG550TMEM, Hügel, Neuss,
Germany) for 15 min at the speed of 1 (low) and normal bowl speed.
The prepared dough was flatted using a rolling pin to reach a thickness
of approximately 1 cm, and then formed by a template to an external
diameter of 7.5 cm and internal diameter of 1 cm. The samples were
kept in an oven for 70 mins at 40 °C to complete the leavening process
(Proof) of doughnut (Ghaitaranpour et al., 2018).
2.2. Frying process
Doughnut frying was done by two methods. In the conventional
26
Journal of Cereal Science 83 (2018) 25–31
deep fat frying method, the fryer (ZDF-880, SUZUKI, Japan) was turned
on for two hours before the beginning of process and the frying was
done at three temperatures (150, 165 and 180 °C). Frying time was 3, 5
and 8 min for deep fat frying and 4, 6 and 8 min for hot air frying
methods. The time of frying was divided into two equal parts. After the
end of the first part the doughnuts were turned upside down to fry the
top surface. For hot air frying method, air fryer (HD9240/90, PHILIPS,
China) was turned on for 20 min to reach a thermal equilibrium. The
frying was done at temperatures of 150, 165 and 180 °C for 4–8 min.
There was no need to rotate the samples during air frying since hot air
covered all parts of the sample's surface. At the end of the frying process
and after reaching the ambient temperature, the samples were pack-
aged (Brühl and Unbehend., 2013).
2.3. Color image acquisition
For digital image processing, cross sections of the doughnut's crust
were prepared and positioned at the center of a flatbed scanner (Xerox,
workcentre 7556, NY., U.S.A.) and covered by a black cloth to obtain a
good contrast between the black background and the bright vertical
cross sections of doughnut. Color images were taken using Xerox®
SMARTsend® acquisition. The resolution was 600 dpi. All conditions
were the same for all doughnut samples. Images were collected in the
RGB space. (Fathi et al., 2011; Ghaitaranpour et al., 2017).
2.4. Crust length measurement
The L*a*b* color system was used for identifying doughnut crust
because the color space is known to be closest to human sense. The
colors of the crust and crumb were measured using ImageJ software
(ImageJ 1.49, NIH, Bethesda, USA). To determine crust area, The
captured images of doughnut cross-sectional slice in RGB format were
transferred to the ImageJ software to determine the crust region by
counting the number of pixels which assemble the necessity of L*a*b*
values (The pixels with L* < 60, a* > 0 and b* > 5) known as the crust
region (Mohd Jusoh et al., 2009). The percentage of doughnut surface
covered by crust (Crust ratio) was estimated by dividing the crust's
length to doughnut's perimeter:
Crust Ratio (CR) = L(t)/L(d)×100 (1)
where L(t) is the length of crust at any frying time and L(d) is dough-
nut's perimeter.
Second-order kinetic was assumed for crust formation, represented
by the variation of time (t) according to Equation (3):
Crust Ratio (CR) = K× t2 (2)
The crust formation rate constant K was related to the doughnut
crust temperature using Equation (4) (r > 95%).
E
K= K 0 × exp ⎛ a ⎞
⎝ RT ⎠ (3)
where, K 0 is frequency factor, l/set; ΔH is activation energy, kJ/(mol);
R is gas constant, kJ/(Kmol); and T is absolute temperature, K.
2.5. Crust roughness measurement
Fractal dimension of the cross-sectional images of doughnut was
used to measure roughness of the crust. At first, the captured images
were transferred to the ImageJ software environment and contrast was
improved by changing the brightness. Then images became binary
using the manual color threshold method (Gray value of L*
Channel > 120, and Gray value of b* Channel > 120) based on red
color and the noises of the captured image were removed by erosion
and dilation operations. Erode and dilate are the fundamental operators
of mathematical morphology. In dilation, the value of the output pixel
is the maximum value of all pixels in the input pixel's neighborhood,
A. Ghaitaranpour et al.
whereas the value of the output pixel in erosion is the minimum value
of them. The edges of the object were detected and separated by a Sobel
edge detector. The fractal dimension of the edge line which separates
doughnut's cross-section from the background was then calculated by
box counting method using Equation (2):
log(Nr)
FD = −
log(r)
where, FD represents the fractal dimension, Nr is the number of counted
boxes and r is the size of the boxes.
The size of the boxes were chosen as 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 32 and 64
pixels and the logarithmic graph of the number of the boxes were drawn
in terms of the size of the boxes and the negative slope of the graph
considered as fractal dimension which represents the roughness of the
crust (Fathi et al., 2011).
2.6. Crust uniformity
Uniformity of the crust was studied by selecting a section with di-
mensions of 600 × 200 pixels from the bottom crust of doughnut. The
captured images were saved as PNG format, then a median filter of
3 × 3 pixels was applied to the image to reduce the noises and the light
reflection of doughnuts surface and color space of the image was
changed from RGB to L*a*b* by a plagin named color space convertor.
The color channels were then separated and gray level histogram of
pixels corresponding to the channel L* was measured by ImageJ in the
line, that is drown in the length of the image. The fluctuations of gray
profile from a given zone of the L channel images was investigated by
studying the standard deviation of graphs as an indicator of the crust
uniformity.
Fig. 1. Evolution of temperature in air fried (A) and deep fat fried doughnuts (B); Hot air stream lines around the doughnut (C); Air fried doughnut's crust fractions (D
and E); Hot oil stream lines around the doughnut (F); Deep fat fried doughnut's crust fractions (G and H).
Journal of Cereal Science 83 (2018) 25–31
2.7. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
Sections captured from different parts of doughnut crust were
photographed using scanning electron microscopy (JEOL JSM-6460LV,
Tokyo, Japan) operated at 20.0 kV, following the method of (Rahimi
and Ngadi, 2015).
(4)
2.8. Temperature profile
A K-type thermocouple recorded the temperature profile of
doughnut at three points, more or less, near the center; other thermo-
couples measured the temperature of the top crust and the bottom crust
during frying. Thermocouples were linked to a data logger (RHXL3SD,
Omega, Taiwan) and temperature profiles in the product were de-
termined for the two frying methods.
2.9. Data analysis
All experiments were carried out in triplicate. Obtained results were
analyzed by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and significant
differences among mean values were realized by Duncan's multiple
range test at P < 0.05, using SPSS software (SPSS 20; IBM SPSS
Statistics, Chicago, USA).
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Temperature profile of doughnut during frying
For air frying method, the central thermal profile could be divided
into three phases as shown in Fig. 1A. Phase I, described by a gradual
27
A. Ghaitaranpour et al.
temperature increase to up to 40 °C followed by phase II where a quick
increase in temperature happened. At the end of the thermal diagram
(phase III) a very slow increase in temperature (90 °C) was observed.
The later phase can be considered as a plateau phase. Temperature
changes occurring in the center of doughnuts core were slower than in
the bottom part and faster than in the upper part of doughnut halfway
through the frying period; however, after turning the doughnut over,
the rate of temperature changes were negligible.
The thermal diagram for deep fat fried doughnuts (central part) also
showed a same initial trend, that is, a very slow temperature increase to
up to 40 °C followed by an abrupt temperature increase at phase II in a
faster manner compared to that of air frying method (Fig. 1B). These
differences in the heat penetration procedure in doughnuts caused some
variations in crust formation during frying by hot air and deep fat
fryers, which will be discussed later. In this method, central tempera-
ture is lower than bottom and upper surface temperature of doughnut
throughout the whole frying process.
3.2. Effect of frying method on formation of doughnut's crust
After the frying time needed to ensure that dough/crumb transition
has been completed, samples were cut and prepared for taking the di-
gital photos. In fact, at this time, the crust temperature was around
100 °C and doughnut's core structure was formed. In Figs. 1 and 2,
different parts of crust and the procedure of doughnut's crust formation
during frying with these two different methods (deep fat and hot air
frying) are shown. Crust development in each method had special
characteristics but as a common principle, crust formation started from
the places where greater heat transfer occurred. Della Valle et al.
(2012) who studied the kinetics of crust formation in French bread also
presented the same result. They successfully determined the thickness
of bread crust by distinguishing the crust and crumb color regions via
the application of digital imaging processing and they explained that
crust is thicker on top of the bread compared to other parts.
For deep fat frying method at 180 °C, the crust formation started
after one minute. Due to the porous and low density structure of
doughnut, a part of doughnut immerses in oil while the other part re-
mains out of the oil. Therefore, in order to fry the upper side of
doughnut, it must be turned over after half of the frying time. As a
result, for deep fat frying method, the doughnut surface could be di-
vided into three parts in term of received heat and consequently the
Fig. 2. The effect of frying time and temperature on crust ratio (CR) of deep fat
fried (A) and hot air fried doughnut(B); Procedure of doughnut's crust forma-
tion during different times of hot air and deep fat frying at 180 °C (C); Changes
of doughnut's surface roughness during frying at 180 °C (D).
28
Journal of Cereal Science 83 (2018) 25–31
formation of crust (Fig. 1G). The first part (1) is the upper side of the
doughnut which has not any connection with the hot oil at the begin-
ning of frying process and only can get a little heat from the fryer body
and the air surrounding. As a result, in this part, the crust was not
formed until the mid of frying time. After rotation of doughnut, this
part was also contacted to the hot oil and the crust formation initiated
due to the high heat transfer, water loss and Maillard reaction.
The second part was the side section which had more complexity
than other parts in terms of receiving heat and formation of crust
(Fig. 1D and G). The crust formation for this part mainly depends on the
volume changes and density of the doughnut and also on the oil density
used for frying. Due to the fermentation process, the volume of
doughnut increases during deep fat frying process meaning that the
density of doughnut is decreasing. In addition, during frying, the dough
expands further as a result of water evaporation and CO2 release giving
the doughnut an expanded volume (Vélez-Ruiz and Sosa-Morales.,
2003).
As mentioned before, different variables could influence the crust
formation in part 2. If the density of doughnut reach to the half of oil
density (approximately 450 kg/m3) during frying, the crust develop-
ment for part 2 is quiet similar to the crust formation in other section of
doughnut surface (part 1 and 3). On the other hand, if the doughnut
density is more than the half of oil density, after turning over the
doughnut some sections of lateral crust (part 2) contacts with the hot oil
and produce doughnut with thicker crust and darker surrounding line.
However, if the density of doughnut is less than 450 kg/m2, some sec-
tions of lateral crust (part 2) would not directly contact with oil during
frying and therefore the crust is not formed at these sections and a
bright line surrounds the doughnut.
The lower side of doughnut (part 3 in Fig. 1) was the third part
which had special heat receiving pattern during deep fat frying. By
starting the frying process, this side contacted with the hot oil and the
crust formation initiated after 1.5 min of frying process at 180 °C. Al-
though the time which doughnut hemmed in on part 1 by the oil was
similar to that of part 3, by rotating the doughnut, the temperatures of
part 3, remained constant at about 100 °C. This could be one of the
main reasons for increase in crust thickness and grow in crust coverage
at this part compared to that of part 1.
For hot air frying, heat transfer fluid is air which covers all parts of
doughnut; therefore, there were some differences in the heating pattern
of doughnut and also the amount of received heat compared to those of
deep fat frying method. Since the air rapidly flows in hot air fryer, the
air stream lines changes when possessing through the doughnuts sur-
face (Fig. 1C). Thus depending on the type and extremity of these
changes, the amount of heat that can penetrate into the doughnut also
changes and therefore the crusts formation procedure in different parts
of doughnut alters.
As shown in Fig. 2C for hot air frying method, crust formation in-
itiated after 1.5 min of frying at 180 °C. The flow direction of hot air
was from top of the doughnut to the bottom of sample. Therefore, the
hot air stream lines were also changed. Changing in thermal energy and
streamlines of hot air create some differences in the amount of received
heat by each part of doughnut surface. These patterns were in ac-
cordance with those reported by Kaya et al. (2007). They studied the
simultaneous heat and mass transfer during drying of cylindrical moist
objects through an implicit finite-difference method. Instantaneous
temperature and moisture distributions inside the moist material as
well as all local convective heat and mass transfer coefficients are also
studied. It was shown that at the beginning of the drying process, the
temperature of back surface of object was lower than the front surface.
This exhibits that the heat transfer coefficients were not equal in dif-
ferent parts of the object surface.
Similar to the deep fat frying method, the crust of air fried doughnut
A. Ghaitaranpour et al. Journal of Cereal Science 83 (2018) 25–31

could also be divided into three sections (Fig. 1D and E). The first
section (part 1) was the upper part of doughnut. This part is the first
region of doughnut surface that contacts with the hot air at the be-
ginning of the frying process. Consequently, part 1 received the highest
amount of heat; thus crust formation initiated from this region and
doughnut's crust had the highest thickness in this part.
The second region of the doughnut's crust (part 2) was in contact
with the air which had lost a part of its thermal energy due to its contact
with the upper surface of doughnut (part 1); therefore a smaller amount
of thermal energy was received by this region compared to part 1 and
the process of crust formation initiated after 2 min of frying at 180 °C.
As shown in Fig. 1C and A, the bottom part of doughnut's crust (part
3) received the least amount of thermal energy from the hot air. This
region has had the thinnest crust and in some parts, the crust had not
been formed.

3.3. Effect of frying time and temperature on doughnut's crust formation

kinetics

The effect of frying temperature on doughnut's crust formation is

shown in Fig. 2A and B. Crust thickness increased and more part of
doughnut surface was covered by the crust when the frying temperature
and time increased for both drying methods. This could be attributed to
the higher heat transfer rate and increase in moisture evaporation in
doughnut during frying at higher temperatures. When the crust hu-
midity decreases to a certain level, the temperature could rise to tem-
peratures higher than the boiling point of water (Della Valle et al.,
2012). This could also accelerate the Maillard reaction and change the
crust's color. As many researchers have pointed out, when the frying
time increases, more water evaporates from the products surface (Vitrac
et al., 2000). van Koerten et al. (2015) reported that in the case of
frying potatoes at different temperatures in same humidity, the crust's
thickness increased by increasing the frying temperature.
There is an interesting point about the influence of frying method
and temperature on the percentage of doughnut surface covered by
crust. Although the heat transfer rate in deep fat frying was higher than
hot air frying method (Figs. 1A and 2A), the percentage of crust cov-
erage was higher in air fried doughnut at 150 °C. In contrast, at higher
frying temperatures this ratio gradually changed. For example at 180 °C Fig. 3. Doughnut crust formed during frying time using a magnification of
there was more crust coverage in deep fat fried doughnut compared 1000 × . Doughnut surface before frying (A); Deep fried doughnut after 30s (B);
with air fried samples. This could be attributed to the different frying Deep fried doughnut after 90s (C); Deep fried doughnut after 180s (D); Hot air
patterns of doughnut in these methods. fried doughnut after 30s (E); Hot air fried doughnut after 90s (F); Hot air fried
doughnut after 240s (G).
For hot air frying technique, all parts of doughnut surface were in
contact with hot air at the same time (Fig. 1C). With increasing the
−1
frying time at lower temperatures (150 °C), the contact time and heat and Ea = 1.34 × 105 for hot air frying and k0 = 9.87 × 1010 s −1
transfer time between doughnut and heating fluid in hot air method and Ea = 1.19 × 105 J/mol for deep fat frying methods. The amount of
become 4 min longer than those of deep fat frying method (Fig. 1C and activation energy showed that the procedure of crust forming in deep
F). As a result, the percentage of crust coverage was higher in air fried fat frying was more dependent on the temperature compared to hot air
doughnut compared with deep fat fried ones at 150 °C. When the frying frying.
temperature decreased, the frying time for these two methods became
much more similar. For example at 150 °C, there is no difference be- 3.4. SEM images of different parts of doughnut crust
tween the frying times of two frying techniques.
The effect of the frying temperature on the rate of crust formation in The structure of doughnuts crust during different frying methods
deep fat frying process was higher than the hot air technique. With with regard to the state of starch granules is shown in Fig. 3. The starch
increasing the frying temperature from 150 °C to 180 °C, the percentage granules in the crust of doughnut fried with deep fat frying method at
of crust coverage increased to 313% and 146% for deep fat frying and 180 °C had more irregularity than the crust fried by air fryer at the same
hot air frying technique, respectively. temperature. This could be due to the higher temperature in the crust of
The extension of crust is a temperature dependent process. It has deep fat fried doughnut as shown in Fig. 1A and B. The arrows show the
been reported that greatly temperature dependent reactions such as notch locations in the starch granules. These differences in the tem-
crust development; will have greater error if time–temperature back- peratures of doughnuts were in agreement with those reported by
ground is not mentioned when kinetic variables are predicted. Teruel et al. (2015). They evaluated the temperature of French fries
Therefore, it is assumed that a non-isothermal kinetics approach to using both deep fat and hot air frying methods and reported that the
model the crust extension at doughnut surface during two methods of crumb temperature at the end of process was higher in deep fat fried
frying is a better way to show the procedure of crust forming, where the French fries (150 °C) than that of air fried ones (110 °C).
thermal history is taken into account (Dolan., 2003). Concavity could obviously be observed at the midpoint of granules,
Data from equations (2) and (3) were obtained as k0 = 9.9 × 1012 s which was apparently created by the quick water loss of starch granules

29
A. Ghaitaranpour et al. Journal of Cereal Science 83 (2018) 25–31

Table 1
log(Nr)
Effect of frying method and temperature on fractal dimension (FD = − log(r) ) as an indicator of crust roughness.

Frying section Deep fat frying Hot air frying

150 °C 165 °C 180 °C 150 °C 165 °C 180 °C

a a a a a
Beginning of frying 1.954 ± 0.0015 1.950 ± 0.0015 1.946 ± 0.0015 1.942 ± 0.004 1.946 ± 0.0029 1.948 ± 0.0006a
Middle of frying 1.956 ± 0.0017ab 1.960 ± 0.003b 1.956 ± 0.0021b 1.954 ± 0.0012b 1.945 ± 0.0032a 1.949 ± 0.001ab
End of frying 1.974 ± 0.0006b 1.967 ± 0.0021c 1.961 ± 0.0023c 1.966 ± 0.0012c 1.957 ± 0.0012b 1.950 ± 0.0006b

The same letter on the same column expresses that there was no statistically significant difference between groups by the Duncan test (p < 0.05).

during frying as a heat/moisture process. Kawabata et al. (1994) also
studied the effects of heat/moisture treatment on the shape of starch
granules by different techniques. The SEM Images of the cross section of
starch granules which were treated by a heat/moisture process pre-
sented large hollow area at the center. They stated that the hollow
region area increased by increasing the heating time. Similar result was
also reported by van de Velde et al. (2002).
Applying lower frying temperature increased the surface roughness
of the crust. For both frying methods the roughness increased by de-
creasing the frying temperature (Table 1). Generally, the doughnut's
crust had a high fractal dimension after deep fat frying compared to
other samples, due to the cracks and irregularities occur as a result of
high heating transfer rate during deep fat frying process. Crust cracking
rarely happens in hot air frying method, therefore air fried doughnut
had a smoother surface.

3.5. The effect of frying method and temperature on doughnut surface

roughness
Fig. 2D shows the changes in the surface roughness of doughnuts
during frying process. The crust fractal dimension, generally increased
during frying which indicates the growth of irregularities in the crust of
doughnuts; this might be due to the water loss, cracks creation during
frying and the shrinkage occurred when the product was cooled. Sur-
face roughness is one of the crust features which is important for two
reasons; first, because it reflects the irregularities and wrinkles of the
crust and may have a negative effect on the consumer acceptance, and
second, because of its effect on the oil absorption especially for deep fat
frying method. Thanatuksorn et al. (2005) measured the fractal di-
mension of a model fried sample (a mixture of water and flour) crust
which represented its relative roughness. They reported that there was
a strong correlation between sample oil absorption and its relative
roughness. Moreno et al. (2010) measured the surface roughness using
an area-scale fractal analysis. Their study showed that the oil absorp-
tion increased when the surface roughness increased.
3.6. The effect of frying method and frying temperature on uniformity of the
crust
Formation and continuity of crust in different parts of the doughnut
surface is considered as uniformity of doughnut crust. Since the surface
color of doughnut changes and its brightness decreases as the crust
begins to form, the change in color especially in lightness indicates the
variation of crust presence in different parts of product surface (Mohd
Jusoh et al., 2009). Therefore, the lower variation of lightness, the
higher uniformly of crust in the region of interest.
As shown in Fig. 4B and C, the most variation in the uniformity of
different parts of crust was seen at the bottom of air fried doughnut
(part 3); therefore, the changes of this part were considered as an index
for doughnut's crust uniformity. Deep fat fried doughnut had more
uniform crust than the air fried samples, and its lightness during frying
comes down uniformly (Fig. 4B and Table 2) while hot air fried
doughnut had a different color change pattern. Changes in air heat
content and the stream lines during hot air frying caused a non-uniform

Fig. 4. Deep fat and hot air fried doughnut's bottom crust (A: Red arrows show the heterogeneity in crust color); The effect of frying time on the uniformity of
doughnut's surface during deep fat (B) and hot air frying (C) at 180 °C.

30
A. Ghaitaranpour et al.
Table 2
Effect of frying method and temperature on the standard deviation of each graph fluctuations as an uniformity index of doughnut's surface.
Frying section Deep fat frying
150 °C 165 °C
a a
Beginning of frying 1.32 ± 0.22 1.32 ± 0.22
Middle of frying 2.5 ± 0.28b 2.56 ± 0.42a
End of frying 4.39 ± 0.82c 4.45 ± 1.16b
The same letter on the same column expresses that there was no statistically significant difference between groups by the Duncan test (p < 0.05).
heating medium around the doughnut which decreased the uniformity
of its crust (Figs. 2C and 4C).
The bottom crust (part 3) of air fried doughnut could be divided into
two sections as shown Fig. 4C. The first section length was measured by
image processing technique and it was about 10 mm which is in contact
with lateral region of crust (part 2). The second section was the middle
part of the bottom crust and its length was approximately 16 mm. This
section received the least amount of heat so that the crust was not
formed in this part and it had the highest L* value among each parts of
doughnut crust.
As shown in the digital images presented in Fig. 4A and Table 2,
frying temperature had no effect on the uniformity of doughnut's crust
produced by deep fat frying method. However, in the case of air fried
doughnut, when the frying temperature increased, the crust uniformity
decreased because the dark and light areas appeared in the bottom crust
(Fig. 4). This phenomenon could be due to the lesser differences in the
amount of thermal energy received by different parts of doughnut at
lower frying temperature. As mentioned before, air stream lines were
not uniform around doughnuts crust during air frying. Therefore, by
decreasing the frying temperature, differences in the amount of re-
ceived heat by different parts of the crust decreased.
4. Conclusions
The effect of temperature and frying method on the kinetics of crust
formation was evaluated in this study. Result showed that the extension
of doughnut crust under different frying conditions was obtained at a
final temperature of around 100 °C. Crust characteristics particularly
the uniformity of crust, percentage of crust coverage, doughnut surface
roughness and procedure of crust formation were significantly affected
by the frying method and temperature. Lower percentage of crust
coverage with high surface roughness was created when low frying
temperature was used. However, as the frying temperature decreased,
the uniformity in crust of air fried doughnut increased. The kinetic
study of crust formation showed that the procedure of crust formation
in deep fat frying was more dependent on temperature compared to the
hot air frying method. Results of the present study provide a quality
criterion for development of innovative frying process with low oil
absorption and also minimum energy necessity.
Acknowledgments
Hereby, the respectable Deputy of Research and Technology of
Ferdowsi University of Mashhad would be appreciated for the dona-
tions and providing the research facilities. Special thanks to Messiah
Sarfarazi for his technical support given to this investigation.
References
Altamirano-Fortoul, R., Le-Bail, A., Chevallier, S., Rosell, C.M., 2012. Effect of the amount
of steam during baking on bread crust features and water diffusion. J. Food Eng. 108,
128–134.
Andrés, A., Arguelles, Á., Castelló, M.L., Heredia, A., 2013. Mass transfer and volume
changes in French fries during air frying. Food Bioprocess Technol. 6, 1917–1924.
Arafat, M., S, 2014. Air frying a new technique for produce of healthy fried potato strips.
Journal of Cereal Science 83 (2018) 25–31
Hot air frying
180 °C 150 °C 165 °C 180 °C
a a a
1.32 ± 0.22 1.32 ± 0.22 1.32 ± 0.22 1.32 ± 0.22 a
4.22 ± 0.92b 5.86 ± 1.49b 6.71 ± 1.22b 10.5 ± 0.76b
4.5 ± 1.9b 6.52 ± 1.16b 9.11 ± 1.05c 12.31 ± 2.19b
J. Food Nutr. Sci. 2, 200.
Besbes, E., Jury, V., Monteau, J.Y., Le Bail, A., 2013. Characterizing the cellular structure
of bread crumb and crust as affected by heating rate using X-ray microtomography. J.
Food Eng. 115, 415–423.
Brühl, L., Unbehend, G., 2013. Preparation of doughnuts using partially hydrogenated
peanut oil and alternative products with reduced content of trans-fatty acids. J. Fur
Verbraucherschutz Und Lebensmittelsicherheit 8, 155–163.
Castro, W., Oblitas, J., Chuquizuta, T., Avila-George, H., 2017. Application of image
analysis to optimization of the bread-making process based on the acceptability of the
crust color. J. Cereal. Sci. 74, 194–199.
Della Valle, G., Chiron, H., Jury, V., Raitière, M., Réguerre, A.L., 2012. Kinetics of crust
formation during conventional French bread baking. J. Cereal. Sci. 56, 440–444.
Dolan, K.D., 2003. Estimation of kinetic parameters for nonisothermal food processes. J.
Food Sci. 68, 728–741.
Fathi, M., Mohebbi, M., Razavi, S.M.a., 2011. Application of fractal theory for prediction
of shrinkage of dried kiwifruit using artificial neural network and genetic algorithm.
Dry. Technol. 29, 918–925.
Gallagher, E., Gormley, T., Arendt, E., 2003. Crust and crumb characteristics of gluten
free breads. J. Food Eng. 56, 153–161.
Ghaitaranpour, A., Rastegar, A., Tabatabaei Yazdi, F., Mohebbi, M., Alizadeh Behbahani,
B., 2017. Application of digital image processing in monitoring some physical
properties of tarkhineh during drying. J. Food Process. Preserv. 41, 1–9.
Ghaitaranpour, A., Mohebbi, M., Koocheki, A., 2018. Characterizing the cellular structure
of air and deep fat fried doughnut using image analysis techniques. J. Food Eng. 237,
231–239.
Heredia, A., Castelló, M.L., Argüelles, A., Andrés, A., 2014. Evolution of mechanical and
optical properties of French fries obtained by hot air-frying. LWT - Food Sci. Technol.
(Lebensmittel-Wissenschaft -Technol.) 57, 755–760.
Mohd Jusoh, Y.M., Chin, N.L., Yusof, Y.A., Abdul Rahman, R., 2009. Bread crust thickness
measurement using digital imaging and L a b colour system. J. Food Eng. 94,
366–371.
Kawabata, A., Takase, N., Miyoshi, E., Sawayama, S., Kimura, T., Kudo, K., 1994.
Microscopic observation and x-ray diff ractometry of HeaVMoisture-treated starch
granules. Starch Staerke 46, 463–469.
Kaya, A., Aydin, O., Dincer, I., 2007. Numerical modeling of forced-convection drying of
cylindrical moist objects. Numer. Heat Tran. A Appl. 51, 843–854.
Lee, J.H., Cho, A.R., Hong, J.Y., Park, D.J., Lim, S.T., 2012. Physical properties of wheat
flour composites dry-coated with microparticulated soybean hulls and rice flour and
their use for low-fat doughnut preparation. J. Cereal. Sci. 56, 636–643.
León, K., Mery, D., Pedreschi, F., León, J., 2006. Color measurement in L*a*b* units from
RGB digital images. Food Res. Int. 39, 1084–1091.
Moreno, M.C., Brown, C.A., Bouchon, P., 2010. Effect of food surface roughness on oil
uptake by deep-fat fried products. J. Food Eng. 101, 179–186.
Ngadi, M.O., Watts, K.C., Correia, L.R., 1997. Finite element method modelling of
moisture transfer in chicken drum during deep-fat frying. J. Food Eng. 32, 11–20.
Purlis, E., Salvadori, V.O., 2007. Bread browning kinetics during baking. J. Food Eng. 80,
1107–1115.
Rahimi, J., Ngadi, M.O., 2015. Surface ruptures of fried batters as influenced by batter
formulations. J. Food Eng. 152, 50–56.
Teruel, M. del R., Gordon, M., Linares, M.B., Garrido, M.D., Ahromrit, A., Niranjan, K.,
2015. A comparative study of the characteristics of French fries produced by deep fat
frying and air frying. J. Food Sci. 80, E349–E358.
Thanatuksorn, P., Pradistsuwana, C., Jantawat, P., Suzuki, T., 2005. Effect of surface
roughness on post-frying oil absorption in wheat flour and water food model. J. Sci.
Food Agric. 85, 2574–2580.
van de Velde, F., van Riel, J., Tromp, R.H., 2002. Visualisation of starch granule
morphologies using confocal scanning laser microscopy (CSLM). J. Sci. Food Agric.
82, 1528–1536.
van Koerten, K.N., Schutyser, M.A.I., Somsen, D., Boom, R.M., 2015. Crust morphology
and crispness development during deep-fat frying of potato. Food Res. Int. 78,
336–342.
Vélez-Ruiz, J.F., Sosa-Morales, M.E., 2003. Evaluation of physical properties of dough of
donuts during deep-fat frying at different temperatures. Int. J. Food Prop. 6,
341–353.
Vitrac, O., Trystram, G., Raoult-Wack, A.-L., 2000. Deep-fat frying of food: heat and mass
transfer, transformations and reactions inside the frying material. Eur. J. Lipid Sci.
Technol. 102, 529–538.
Volpini-Rapina, L.F., Sokei, F.R., Conti-Silva, A.C., 2012. Sensory profile and preference
mapping of orange cakes with addition of prebiotics inulin and oligofructose. LWT -
Food Sci. Technol. (Lebensmittel-Wissenschaft -Technol.) 48, 37–42.
31