Baking&Snack - October 2011 - 75

PAN BREADS

Get ready to accelerate with new technologies for pan bread production.

BY SHANE WHITAKER y this time next year, the bread industry will be greatly different than it is today, noted a recent Milling & Baking News report. “Fundamental changes range from likely to imminent for each of the largest bread companies in the US, creating an atmosphere of anticipation and uncertainty,” stated “Bread Industry Perspective” on the front page of its Sept. 20 issue. The report also noted that these changes occur at a time when the bread business is not particularly strong. In fact, fresh bread unit sales fell 3.3% for the 52 weeks that ended Aug. 7, according to Infoscan Reviews from SymphonyIRI Group. Despite the sales decline and losing market share to specialty bread products, baking companies continue to seek solutions to produce pan breads more efficiently and cost-effectively. GUARDING QUALITY. Automation offers the best way to improve output and energy efficiencies, according to Sherri Swabb, business development manager, The Peerless Group, Sidney, OH. “Automated lines require less human interaction at an operator level, therefore reducing the full-time equivalent costs associated with the process,” she said. “Peerless mixers are used quite regularly in automated bread lines because our control systems,

automated tilt-and-jog options and enclosed customized mixer canopies support this process well.” In the US and UK markets, pan bread continue to move toward whole-wheat and specialty wholegrain varieties, Ms. Swabb noted. “The whole-grain product’s dough is typically more dense than that of white pan bread, so bakers must modify the mixing equipment or the mixing process to accommodate this change in density,” she said. High-speed pan bread lines installed today run a larger variety of products such as whole-grain, highfiber and rye than those of a decade ago, according to Bruce Campbell, dough systems product manager, AMF Bakery Systems, Richmond, VA. “The use of recipe management in the operator interface terminals is needed for simple changeover, in some cases requiring only the press of a button to change products on a makeup line,” he said. New mixing control technologies allow bakers to more closely monitor the process to ensure consistency batch to batch. AMF’s Dough Guardian, a mixer monitoring tool, can predict the completion of the mix. It will halt and alert the operator if any of nine different parameters is out of specification during the mix cycle. “Dough Guardian has a statistical process control package that permanently

retains all the data from each mix cycle,” Mr. Campbell said. “This data is graphed and trended for analysis and review by production staff.” Peerless has focused on helping bakers improve product quality and consistency with its Dough Quality Control (DQC), which Ms. Swabb referred to as a highly sophisticated integrated mixer control system. “The system monitors dough temperature and consistency from batch to batch, measuring and displaying the instantaneous mix cycle energy curve along with a target energy curve as the dough batch is mixed,” she explained. Maintaining proper dough temperatures is essential to ensuring consistent product quality, according to Terry Bartsch, vice-president, sales, Shaffer Manufacturing Corp., a Bundy Baking Solutions company, Urbana, OH. To this end, Shaffer offers jacketed and bowl-end cooling as well as refrigerated agitators. Mr. Bartsch noted the use of variable-frequency drives to eliminate the energy spikes common when horizontal mixers change from low to high speeds. These drives also provide builtin soft-start capabilities. ▶ This extrusion dough divider’s new augers help to improve scaling accuracy and decrease dough shear.
AMF BAKERY SYSTEMS

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October 2011 / BAKING & SNACK

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Baking&Snack - October 2011

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