Baking & Snack - October 2009 - 28

▲ Bridor USA's highly automated twin processing lines form, proof,
score, cool and freeze products and require only a handful of operators to
monitor the process.
customers and perhaps one week working from his
home office. "I also find time and value being an officer in associations such as IDDBA and IBA," he said.
"I bring no value looking over anyone's shoulder, nor
do I have to with the strong team we have in place."
READY AND SET. When Mr. Le Duff started Bridor, he
focused on producing artisan-quality products with the
most modern technology. That enabled Bridor to establish a global reputation with 5-star restaurants and major
food service customers. Products made in its commercialscale bakeries helped these customers become economically viable.
The Vineland plant was acquired from a European
baking company in 2002 to take advantage of the company's expanding presence in the US. It covers 135,000 sq
ft on 16.5 acres. The plant was built in 2000 and already
had two bread production lines installed.
This plant now has the two highly productive bread
and roll lines and an artisan line. "It has floorspace for
more lines," Mr. Cardey said. "Vineland is ready and set
to continue our North American expansion and to do it
quickly because the infrastructure is already in place."
In fact, in late August, the GLDA board of directors
approved $20 million for capital improvements and
expansion for pastry and croissant production.
All processing areas in the building feature a light
green epoxy-coated floor - even the walled-off empty
25,000-sq-ft processing bay. Every wall uses washdown paneling, and a 30-ft-high dropped ceiling conceals joists and utility cables. Skylights allow natural
light to enter the building, and the company is investigating adding solar panels to the roof as an environmental initiative.
The building was designed for manufacturing frozen
products. "It has a refrigerated room just before the dock
that allows staging under low temperatures, and we only
load the refrigerated shipping trucks when their interior

BAKING & SNACK / October 2009

temperature is cold enough," Mr. Hyacinthe said. "This
helps prevent condensation on products."
For the two baguette and roll lines, flour is conveyed
from one of three Spiromatic outdoor silos to the holding bin above the VMI continuous mixing and kneading
system. Three stainless-steel bins hold other ingredients
and water, and all employ loss-in-weight feeders. Being
a closed system, the dough makeup area requires only
three people.
The jacketed mixer/kneader controls dough temperatures to within ±1F°. At the mixer exit, dough is chunked onto a reversible conveyor to supply the two parallel
production lines.
The two baguette lines integrate dough dividing,
makeup, forming, proofing, scoring, baking, cooling
and freezing at a rate of more than 700 trays per hour -
approximately 2 tons of product: 5,000 baguettes or
20,000 mini baguettes or rolls.
The proofers carry fluted trays of dough pieces
through three zones, each independently controlled
for temperature and humidity. The vertical design of
the Mecatherm systems fit well in this plant with high
ceilings. Automatic scoring systems bridge the proofers
and ovens. Each scoring system employs three axes of
motion to slit the crust of dough pieces with the same
spatial characteristics of a hand score, including overlapping of subsequent cuts.
Pans of scored bread continue into the 3-zone ovens.
The vertical ovens are just 25 ft long, again using the
high ceiling to their advantage as they index trays up and
down in each tower. Heat and humidity are controlled
separately in each oven zone.
From the ovens, pans proceed into ambient air cooling towers and then to the freezers, which also use the
same vertical movement of the proofers and ovens.
Products are baked to varying degrees of doneness, between 60 and 100%, based on customer specifications,
according to Mr. Hyacinthe. Products leave the freezer
and are raked out of the pan, through Safeline metal
▼ Fully frozen loaves are raked out of pans and travel through metal
detectors before bulk packaging.

Baking & Snack - October 2009

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