SALTWELL Group will demonstrate its naturally low-sodium salt at Food Ingredients Europe in Frankfurt next month, with bread and bakery reformulation among the application areas in focus.

Salt plays several functional roles in bread production beyond flavour, contributing to fermentation regulation, gluten development, dough strength and shelf life. This makes it one of the more technically constrained targets for sodium reduction.

The most common reformulation approach, partial substitution with potassium chloride, introduces labelling complications and is associated with bitter or metallic off-notes and variable dough behaviour.

SALTWELL is produced by solar evaporation of hypersaline water from the Atacama salt flats in Chile. The resulting co-crystallised mineral matrix contains 236mg sodium per gram, compared with 390mg/g in standard salt. The company markets it as a 1:1 replacement requiring no recipe or process changes.

In bread applications, the company’s technical data puts achievable sodium reduction at 26% on a like-for-like basis. A sensory evaluation comparing bread at 400mg sodium per 100g with a reformulated version at 296mg sodium per 100g showed no significant differences across ten assessed attributes, including taste, smell, crumb structure and chew.

A case study by SALTWELL describes a North American sandwich bread manufacturer that replaced standard salt 1:1 with SALTWELL, recording 26% sodium reduction with no reformulation of the base recipe. Loaf volume, crumb structure, crust colour, flavour and shelf-life parameters were reported as unchanged.

In the EU, the ingredient can be labelled as “reduced sodium salt” in line with regulatory guidance. No potassium chloride declaration is required.

SALTWELL Group opened a production facility in Santiago, Chile earlier this year, near the Atacama source material.

Anders Hansson, CEO of SALTWELL Group, said:

“Sensory tests have shown that in some cases it can actually improve flavour.”

Image credit: PAVEL IARUNICHEV