Effects of Low-Temperature Drying with Intermittent Gaseous Chlorine Dioxide Treatment on Texture and Shelf-Life of Rice Cakes

We investigated the effect of chlorine dioxide (ClO2) under low temperature drying to suppress rice cake stickiness during the cutting process by initiating the onset of retrogradation until the stickiness is minimized for shelf-life extension. The intermittent ClO2 application at low-temperature drying was conducted at 10 °C for different drying periods (0, 6, 12, 18, and 24 h). Texture analysis showed significant differences with increasing values of hardness (901.39 ± 53.87 to 12653 ± 1689.35 g) and reduced values of modified adhesiveness (3614.37 ± 578.23 to 534.81 ± 89.37 g). The evaluation of rice cake stickiness during the cutting process revealed an optimum drying period of 18 h with no significant difference (p ≤ 0.05) compared to the 24 h drying process. Microbial contamination during the drying process increased, with microbial load from 6.39 ± 0.37 to 7.94 ± 0.29 CFU/g. Intermittent ClO2 application at 22 ppm successfully reduced the microbial load by 63% during drying process. The inhibitory property of ClO2 was further analyzed on a sample with high initial microbial load (3.01 ± 0.14 CFU/g) using primary and modified secondary growth models fitted to all experimental storage temperatures (5–25 °C) with R2 values > 0.99. The model demonstrated a strong inhibition by ClO2 with microbial growth not exceeding the accepted population threshold (106 CFU/g) for toxin production. The shelf-life of rice cake was increased by 86 h and 432 h at room temperature (25 °C) and 5 °C respectively. Microbial inactivation via ClO2 treatment is a novel method for improved food storage without additional thermal sterilization or the use of an additional processing unit.