5 Ways Large Bakeries Can Improve Their Production Line

Dec. 23, 2024

5 Ways Large Bakeries Can Improve Their Production Line

Like every other business, bakeries must compete, and to compete effectively they must continually refine and improve their products.

Link to QinLi

To do this, and to meet changing consumer demand, they must look at their methods and processes as well as the ingredients they use.

Central to this is quality control and assurance and having the capability to analyse ingredients and products using advanced baking technology. One such piece of technology is the C-Cell baking quality analyser.

If you&#;re running a large bakery, here are five ways of refining your production line.

1. Quality Test Your Raw Ingredients

If you're going to bake consistently high-quality products, then you need to ensure that your raw ingredients are of consistently high quality too.

This type of quality control is fundamental to refining your baking production &#; if the ingredients aren&#;t up to scratch, nothing you can do will compensate for this.

These ingredients include:

Flour
Yeast
water
Sugar

Salt
Fat.

Flour and yeast are especially critical. Changes in the amount and quality of protein in flour can have a big impact on your bake. Likewise, yeast loses potency over its lifetime, and this is a short period of around a month.

Effective quality control means establishing clear specifications for each of these ingredients and carrying out standardised tests and sample analysis. Where ingredients fail to meet these specifications then you should reject them and communicate any issues to your suppliers.

Consider carefully the quality parameters you&#;re going to work to, such as:

Protein, ash and moisture content

Particle size distribution
Permissible levels of contaminants, such as mycotoxins
Rheological tests
Falling number tests for enzyme activity.

2. Test Your Bakes

Refinement comes from repeating processes and making small changes where necessary.

It&#;s important to gauge the impact of these changes and how they influence key factors and features in your baked goods, including:

Crust
Crumb Structure
Colour
Internal Characteristics
External Features

Using the C-Cell baking analyser, you can get objective measurements of vital baking characteristics to support the refinement of your baking production.

When you apply a test sample to C-Cell, the instrument will measure:

Colour &#; l*a*b* colour results, along with data such as internal crumb colour, external crust colour and depth
Shape &#; the visual appearance of the sample, recording its concavity, shoulder and bottom roundness and oven spring
Dimensions &#;multiple measurements for each sample slice, including the area, width and dimensions for optimum packaging
Cell size &#; measuring cell size to quantify holes, cell areas, volumes and wall thickness
Elongation &#; crumb cell elongation measurement, indicates how well the sample moulds.

3. Monitor and Adjust Your Baking Production

At different stages of the baking process, there are opportunities to make small adjustments to improve quality, reduce costs and drive efficiency.

Improving dough quality is a key means of adjustment. Dough mixing is where the creative baking process begins, and recipe and batch control is essential for repeatable product quality.

At the dividing stage, careful handling of the dough is vital to avoid damage to the dough structure. Controlling the force you exert on the dough will help ensure that you maintain dough quality.

Monitoring and adjusting these processes can also help you save on ingredients such as yeast and flour improvers while still boosting your yield.

Building monitoring and measuring into your processes using technology is the key to future-proofing your baking production and ensuring product consistency.

4. Benchmark and Optimise Your Processes

You should be setting clear benchmarks for your bakery production. Automation will bring certain efficiencies, but on its own, it's not enough to guarantee the consistency of the finished product you require.

Consider which processes pose a risk to baking quality if you don&#;t keep track of them and ensure their consistency.

These include:

Mixing &#; changes in temperature or mixing time can impact product quality
Sheeting and moulding &#; if you damage the structure of dough during these moulding processes, it can release gases before baking, or suffer damage to its cell structure
Baking &#; applying the wrong oven temperatures can affect the oven spring of a loaf, and interfere with the whole baking process
Cooling &#; the main goal here is to decrease the internal temperature of the bread to reach an optimum temperature that allows the loaf to keep, but cooling too rapidly can cause the sidewalls of the loaf to collapse.

Objective and scientific baking quality analysis (see below) supports process benchmarking and optimisation, addressing potential processing issues that can affect quality.

5. Use Objective Methods to Measure Characteristics

The traditional way of measuring characteristics in baked goods, such as crumb texture and flavour, crust colour and loaf volume, is subjective. It involves taste, smell and touch.

But to meet the demands of a large bakery production line you need more efficient and advanced testing methods.

These should be objective, relying on solid data and in-depth analysis rather than sensory impressions.

This is where C-Cell can add value to baking processes, optimise production lines and improve the quality and consistency of finished products.

It can provide a detailed and objective analysis of samples in only five seconds, using high-definition imaging to do this.

C-Cell also provides additional features such as the optional bread-scoring system. Bread Score is based on precision-based image capture and measurement of critical parameters, including:

Number of cells
Net cell elongation
Non-uniformity of cells
Cell diameter
Number of holes
Wall thickness.

The scoring system will correlate with the bakery&#;s own defined set of criteria and benchmarks.

This provides essential and practical support to bakeries looking to refine their baking production.

Support for Your Baking Processes

C-Cell will help you ensure your baked products maintain the high consistency consumers are looking for while meeting stringent food standards.

For more details, please call us on +44 (0) 860 401, or fill in our online contact form.

Features and Types of Industrial Baking Ovens

If you&#;re building a new industrial bakery facility or launching a new product line, you&#;re probably going to need a new oven. The oven is usually the most expensive, not to mention the most important, piece of equipment on a bakery production line, so it&#;s business-critical that you choose the right one.

This article provides an overview of the main types of industrial bakery ovens and the applications for which they work best.

Features to look for in an industrial baking oven

No matter what your application, here are some key features to look for in an industrial baking oven.

Sufficient capacity for the present and the future

Ovens are available in many sizes and able to handle a wide range of capacities. Since the oven will likely represent your most significant investment, choose one that will support your needs now and also allow your business to grow into the future. Ovens that use modular construction can be easily expanded for greater throughput.

A user-friendly HMI

A user-friendly HMI is one of the key features that makes bakery equipment flexible, allowing operators to easily change recipes on demand. Icon-based HMIs are easier than language-based ones.

Precise process control
Additional reading:
Non-Fried Instant Noodles Production Line High ...
Choosing the Right Shrink Wrap Machine
4 Advice to Choose a Custom Hydraulic cylinder Manufacturer
The company is the world’s best Industrial Bakery Line supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.

Whether they work in a home kitchen or an industrial one, every baker knows the importance of precise control over the baking process. Newer machines with the latest heating and monitoring technologies will provide more precise process control.

Energy-efficiency

An energy-efficient oven will reduce your total cost of ownership by saving you money on fuel and utilities over the long-term.

Tool-less cleaning and changeover

Especially if you want to run multiple products on the same line, tool-less cleaning and changeover is a must. This feature also simplifies regular maintenance and service.

Short set-up and heat recovery times

Similar to tool-less cleaning and changeover, these factors help determine the oven&#;s flexibility. If you&#;re only running one product, then short set-up and heat recovery times aren&#;t as important. But, if you need to run multiple products on the same line, they&#;re a must.

Even baking across the width of the belt

Because of the way some ovens transfer heat, the products on the outside of the belt receive less heat than the products on the inside of the belt. To avoid a high level of waste, or inconsistent product quality, make sure your oven bakes evenly across the entire width of the belt.

Types of industrial baking ovens

When we talk about types of industrial baking ovens, what we&#;re really talking about is the different ways the product is heated. This impacts just about every aspect of a product, from the time it takes to cook to the texture and appearance.

Direct- and indirect-fired ovens

Direct- and indirect-fired ovens are traditional baking units that use radiant heat to create a hot baking chamber, which heats food from the outside-in. They can be powered using gas (the most common), oil, or electricity.

The way direct- and indirect-fired ovens transfer heat is similar, with the main difference being whether or not the food products come into contact with the products of combustion:

In a direct-fired oven, the burner heats the baking chamber directly. The food products
do
come into contact with combustion products.
In an indirect-fired oven, the burner heats a heat exchanger, which transfers the heat into the baking chamber. The food products
do not
come into contact with combustion products.

Direct-fired ovens are ideal for products that require high temperatures and short baking times.

Example applications for direct gas-fired ovens

Pizzas
Flatbreads
Pita bread
Bread
Rolls

Bagels
Biscuits
Cookies
Crackers

Learn more about direct gas-fired ovens.

Indirect-fired ovens are better for products that require lower temperatures and longer baking times.

Example applications for indirect gas-fired ovens

Bread
Rolls

Cakes
Confectionary

Learn more about indirect gas-fired ovens.

Impingement ovens

Impingement ovens are indirect-fired baking solutions, which means that no combustion products share the baking chamber with the food products.

Like traditional ovens, impingement ovens surround products with radiant heat, but they also use pressurized jets of hot air to penetrate the product. This design significantly shortens the cooking time by heating product from the inside as well as from the outside.

Impingement ovens are best for products that need to be cooked quickly but are also relatively sturdy &#; fragile doughs and batters don&#;t stand up well to the jets of hot air.

Example applications for impingement ovens

Pizzas
Calzones
Flatbreads
Empanadas
Bread
Breadsticks
Cakes

Cookies
Pastries
Muffins
Pies
Macaroons
Granola

Learn more about impingement ovens.

Thermal oil ovens

Thermal oil ovens provide the gentle heat transfer necessary to create artisan-style products at an industrial scale. These ovens are hugely popular in Europe and are gaining traction in the United States because of their ability to handle high moisture doughs and produce artisan-style crusts. Thermal oil ovens also have a high thermal capacity, providing precise temperature control.