Baking & Snack - November 2014 - 32

CORROPOLESE BAKERY & DELI

Balls of dough exit the intermediate proofer to be moulded into rolls.
ment and gain flavor through the next day. First thing
Mike does every night is move the product from this
retarder to a proofer - one he designed himself from
two Reed proof boxes. The proofer sits at 100°F and
100% humidity.
From the proofer, the rolls go into another retarding
cooler that acts as a staging area for the oven. Here the
dough is brought down to 55°F before entering the oven.
Bakers then load the bread and rolls into a J4 indirectfired, cylcothermic oven from Topos Mondial, the first
sold in North America. "That took a big leap of faith, but
it was also a great opportunity for Corropolese," Mike
said. The oven was installed in the spring of 2013 and
was a significant upgrade from the bakery's three revolving tray ovens.
Three different ovens with three different skilled bakers running them caused variations in product and quality. Every load was different. "The quality was not there,"
Mike said. "It was good enough to get us where we are,
but the quality now is so much different."
With the J4 oven, the bakery requires three to four operators, but only one of them needs to be a skilled baker,
and the oven can bake in three hours with better quality
and consistency what the three tray ovens baked in 12
hours. That vast an improvement could not be ignored.
Going from revolving tray ovens to a tunnel oven
was not without its learning curve, but Topos Mondial
was with Mike as he learned to make automated tunnel
oven baking work for him. Despite Corropolese Bakery's
growth, the production line still does short runs with
many changeovers instead of long runs of one product.
Typically during a changeover, the operator would
change the bake profile to get consistent heat throughout

32 Baking & Snack November 2014 / www.bakingandsnack.com

the oven suited to the new product. However, this was
not efficient for Corropolese Bakery due to the many
different products being baked back to back. To address
this, Mike, assisted by Topos Mondial, learned how to
change the spacing and loading of the various products
onto the baking hearth. The idea is to load the oven to
get the same lb per sq ft of product on the baking belt,
so that the operators can stay with one baking profile
for many similar yet different types of products. Now,
the operators keep the bake profile the same but simply
change the loading pattern of the product on the belt to
maximize use of heat.
The oven's Duotherm zones also give Mike and his
operators control over the product's color without
having to change the bake time. Heat from within the
baking chamber blows around the product to accelerate its transfer.
This J4 oven also came equipped with STIR technology, which converts convective heat into infrared wavelengths that penetrate the product. Baking takes 15 to
30% less time than with normal convection heat, resulting in a greater volume-to-weight ratio. Mike saw such
an improvement in their rolls' volume that he actually
had to change the type of flour he was using to a lower
protein type, saving money in the process.
After exiting the oven, the rolls travel the perimeter of
the oven room on a conveyor to cool down before being
separated for orders, which are staged near the bays at
the end of the oven room. Orders are then picked up either by Corropolese's nine delivery trucks to be dropped
off at the retail locations or by wholesale customers.

Signature demands consistency
Corropolese Bakery produces more than 100 different
products including hoagie rolls and pastries, but they
are most known for their tomato pies, a regional dish
that has won the bakery several local awards. Similar
to a pizza, though the Corropolese family insists it isn't
a pizza, the pie's thick yeast-raised crust is topped with
tomato sauce and baked. The bakery also offers it with
other toppings.
"If you're coming to one of our stores, you're probably coming for that," Joe said. "Most people don't leave
without one." This much demand for Corropolese's
signature product meant that as the business continued to grow, automation was going to be necessary to
keep delivering the quality consumers expect from
the bakery's top product.
Before purchasing a Rondo sheeting line a year ago,
eight employees manually stretched the tomato pie
dough, again resulting in variations. The Rondo line now
does the same process without changes in quality from
pie to pie, with only two operators required. Currently,

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Baking & Snack - November 2014

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