BioE Graduate Seminars

Event Introduction

Biotechnology and bread making: developing better and healthier bread for the 21st century

Abstract

Bread is one of most ancient man-made foods and is considered one of the major worldwide staple foods. Throughout history, bread making has evolved from the traditional hand mixing of water and flour to today’s modern industrialized process in which several technical aids are used to produce breads in a more fast and efficient way.

In recent years however, consumers are more and more opting for healthier products with less additives. It is in this context that biotechnology can contribute to make bread healthier again by replacing additives with new enzymes and new metabolites that can bring back the traditional taste of bread while maintaining quality and scalable production.

In this presentation, I will guide you through the production of enzymes for industrial bread making, the development of artisanal tailor-made sourdough solutions and even how we plan to produce bread on Mars.

About the speaker

Dr. Nolla-Ardevol graduated in Biotechnology and M.Sc. in Environmental Microbiology in Barcelona (Spain). In 2011 he was awarded a doctorate scholarship from the Cluster Industrial Biotechnology (CLIB-GC) at Bielefeld University (Germany) to pursue a Ph.D. in anaerobic digestion of microalgae at extreme conditions in the group of Prof. Marc Strous and Professor Olaf Kruse.

From 2015 to 2018 he was a Postdoctoral researcher at the Soil and Water Management in the group of Professor Dirk Springael in KUL (Belgium). His research focused on the ‘omics characterization of bacterial communities for space exploration under the umbrella of the MELiSSA project from the European Space Agency.

In 2018, he left academia to join Puratos, a Belgian B2B ingredients company in the field of bakery, patisserie and chocolate, where he joined the sourdough fermentation team as R&D manager in metabolomics. In this role, he uses a combination of omics and classical microbiology techniques to explore and identify new bacterial strains, new enzymes and new metabolites to create healthier breads and new functional sourdoughs.