The early stages of bread dough proving were modeled following the diffusion theory and using a newtonian constitutive equation to account for dough rheology. The model was fitted, by constrained minimization of the sum of squared errors function, to experimental growth curves of common dough formulations. Values for the dough viscosity, a first order fermentation rate constant and the bubble size at the beginning of proving were chosen as the degrees of freedom in the fitting procedure. The viscosity value obtained for a plain dough formulation was 30 x 10(6) Pa s, this value is in the range of viscosity values determined by Rouille et al. (2005), for wheat dough through creep-recovery and lubricated squeezing flow tests. The results obtained were plotted as a function of dough formulation composition and the trends were observed and analyzed. The observed tendencies and correlations between dough properties and dough formulation follow the trends observed in experimental data reported in the literature for dough systems. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.