Baking&Snack - September 2011 - 46

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“A benefit to having the business run well is that you can buy the best.”
— Cordia Harrington, chief manager, Tennessee Bun Company
the mixer to the Tromp sheeting line’s hopper. The sheeter creates a wide, thick ribbon of dough that passes under a flour-dusting station. Two sets of reduction rollers gently reduce the depth of the dough sheet. Another flour-dusting station is positioned before the third set of reduction rollers. The cutter turns the dough sheet into individual biscuits, and a few feet later, an angled conveyor belt pulls off the web of excess dough. The scrap dough returns to the hopper feeding the sheeter. Although scrap dough aids flavor characteristics, NBC carefully controls the amount reincorporated.

▲ Biscuits separate for panning, and the web of scrap dough travels back to the sheeting head. The raw biscuits continue along to a reciprocating conveyor that drops down slightly before it retracts to release the dough pieces onto a waiting flat pan. Panned biscuits proceed at once into the Tromp Group USA oven loader, which assembles pans into groups of five and sweeps them forward onto the oven belt. Alternately, the loader can route pans into the buffer for temporary storage. Baking proceeds quickly in the Den Boer impingement oven. Engineers placed the oven’s control terminal at the infeed end. Its interface displays run conditions as well as air temperature, belt speed and heat exchanger function, along with machine diagnostics. At the end of the oven, a Tromp Group USA unloader removes pans and sends them immediately through the Capway depanner rebuilt by Topos Mondial. Pans cool as they circulate back to the sheeting line, while hot biscuits move along a conveyor leading to the Northfield spiral cooler, also rebuilt and installed by Topos. The fully enclosed

Going for Sustainability
Like most food industry projects, Nashville Bun Company took sustainability into account when expanding. “In particular, one of the criteria for the oven was that it was energyefficient,” said Cordia Harrington, CEO, Tennessee Bun Company, Nashville, TN. She reported that gas and electric usage for the Den Boer impingement oven is significantly less than that of any other oven in the company’s production processes. To save on long-term energy costs, the company chose air exchange methods instead of refrigeration for the enclosed spiral cooler on the biscuit line. During layout and design phases, the team met with all departments to discuss sustainability matters. “QA and sanitation departments were involved with design so decisions could be made on the front end,” Ms. Harrington said. Follow-up included modifications to different pieces of equipment and the building to help cleaning and to meet British Retail Consortium (BRC) guidelines. BRC standards drive sustainability efforts worldwide.

BAKING & SNACK / September 2011

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Baking&Snack - September 2011

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