Baking & Snack - July 2004 - 36

and beaters in mixer bowls, as well
as new diesel engine options for delivery vehicles.
Around the time of the magazine's founding, bakers were starting to automate their processing lines in earnest. Mechanization
of manual operations had been around for a long time, but applying a computer to the machines in the bakery - well, that was
something new. By 1983, a number of plants used machinery run
by programmable logic controllers (PLCs) at the machine, or station, level. Plant-level computer integrated manufacturing (CIM)
was an unrealized dream. In its February 1984 issue, BE reported
the November 1983 seminar sponsored by the American Institute
of Baking (AIB) on bakery automation. This proved to be a pivotal
event, establishing the protocols for integrating this new technology into bakery machinery applications.
From that point on, the magazine intensified its examination
of leading-edge applications of automation in the bakery. These
included robotic loading of delivery baskets and in-floor conveying
for order picking and use of automatic guided vehicles, first for pan
storage and then fermentation room trough handling systems. PLCs
brought statistical process control (SPC) into the plant, important
in the industry's later adoption of online inspection technologies,
total quality management (TQM) and enterprise resource planning
(ERP) systems. Another "Star Wars" topic covered in the magazine
was Internet telemetry for machine troubleshooting. Disruptions
anticipated in advance of the turn of the century, the Y2K problem,
were covered, too. The more down-to-earth matter of just-in-time
supply was reported in the contest of plant operations management.
New technologies that emerged during the past quarter-century
included the application of rheology, or the science of the deformation of matter, to dough processing. The "Cookie Wars" of the early
1980s, which saw introduction of the soft-textured cookie thanks to
dual-dough extruding technology, was an early result. As reported
in the magazine's pages, croissant processing was the first to benefit,
but later on, articles described rheology's application to the highabsorption doughs of artisan-style products.
When the bagel boom was heard throughout the industry, starting in 1987, BE was there to report about its forming, boiling,
baking, freezing and packaging angles. In the early 1990s, tortilla
technology also underwent a revolution in reliability and capacity. Rotary dividing was a new topic in 1988. Articles about flour
chilling appeared starting in 1989. When serpentine and vertical
systems revolutionized proofing, baking, cooling and freezing
technologies in the 1990s, B&S reported on them, too. Discussed in
2000 were nonstick pan coatings and, in 2002, changes in stringline
technology were examined.

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36 / BAKING & SNACK / July 2004

FORMULATING TOPICS. Ingredients, formulating and product development moved into B&S's pages in 1988 when it went
monthly. RS and B&S added to their coverage of food safety initiatives, especially hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP)
programs. Allergens in 1998 and organic foods in 2002 marked
important new areas of coverage.
The new content proved timely. Low-fat was about to hit, and

Baking & Snack - July 2004

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