According to regulatory documents, the color of bakery products is determined by organoleptic analysis, an essential fault of which is the assessment subjectivity. Instrumental analysis is widely used currently in world practice to evaluate the color characteristics of various food products, including bakery products. The most widely used colorimetric system is the CIE Lab. The aim of the study was to determine the effect of baking time in an electrical sole oven on the color characteristics of bakery products made from patent wheat flour. The objects of the study were products prepared according to the recipe for long loaf with different baking times (15-40 min). Samples of bakery products were examined by organoleptic analysis (taste, crust color, crumb color, bread aroma, crumb aroma, crumb condition). The analysis of the color characteristics of the crust and crumb was performed using a colorimeter Chroma meter CR-410 (Konica Minolta, Japan) in the CIE Lab system. The studies have shown that with increasing baking time, the lightness (L*) decreases from 72.60±1.75% to 48.75±1.43%; the parameter b* decreases significantly starting from 35 minutes of baking from 23.43±0.28° to 15.42±1.30°; while the parameter a* initially increases from 6.40±1.12° to a peak value of 10.57±0.43° by 30 minutes of baking, and then decreases. Comparison of the results of the color characteristics of the bakery product with the results of the organoleptic analysis made it possible to establish the ranges of color characteristics L* (55-68%) and a* (9-11°), at which the color of the bread crust and the product as a whole is positively assessed by tasters. The b* parameter did not have an unambiguous correlation with the results of the organoleptic analysis. Using the international CIE Lab system for measuring bakery product color characteristics, it has been proven that the most informative values for assessing the crust color of wheat flour products are the characteristics “L*” and “a*”, which correlate with the organoleptic assessment of these products. These characteristics can be used as visual indicators in the automatic baking time control process.

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