和菓子「最中」製造における微生物汚染の解析事例

Abstract

: Food hygiene in Japanese-style confectionery factories is hard to practice because the businesses are small. In a supporting system of voluntary-based hygienic management in this field, we microbiologically investigated the production processes of "Monaka" in a workshop in Tokyo. We microbiologically assessed the processing environments as well as the products in the workshop, then proposed some improvements in the production of the confectionery. After the improvements, microbial contamination of the processing environments was reduced and no microbial contamination was found in the sugared bean, or "An" produced, though the product "Monaka" was still contaminated, especially by molds. It was clarified that the molds came from contaminated baked wheat shells, or "Kawa" and further that the wheat shells were contaminated by molds during storage.