Bakery products have a very short shelf life and their quality is highly dependent on the process variables and on the time between baking and consumption. Apart from starch, which is the major constituent of wheat flour, other substances such as gluten, non-starch polysaccharides and lipids influence the quality of the final product. In this paper, an application of the SAFES methodology (systematic approach to food engineering systems) to the breadmaking process is developed. Compositional data of bread at the different stages of the process were required. Data were obtained mainly from the bibliography and were organized in terms of the SAFES methodology. The application succeeded in visually summarizing the changes occurred at the different stages of the process: mass transfer phenomena and changes of state were easily detected by means of this methodology, leading to a better understanding of the process, even though the available suitable data was scarce. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.