Baking & Snack - December 2019 - 54

SHEETING/LAMINATING

Sheeting lines consistently
create biscuits and other
baked goods of all shapes
and sizes.
Moline Machinery

"Laminated dough books are produced, panned and
then taken to a fermentation room. These books can
then be brought back out to the sheeting line for final
processing and makeup."
For sheeting, Mr. Moline stressed that developing
the proper cell structure determines the final product.
While no-stress systems create open-grain breads, heavy
rollers and hot or cold presses are often used for tortillas
and thin-crust pizzas.
Stress-free sheeting also may prevent laminated dough
from splitting or breaking. "When the layers are not broken, the fat is trapped in the layer and forced to push up
- not out - giving you a much larger oven jump," said
John Giacoio, vice-president of sales, Rheon USA.
Minipan bases its sheeting technology on dough
hydration. The Raffinatore, for medium-hydrated
doughs, relies on punch-and-fold technology to enhance the gluten network and final product texture, said
Franco Fusari, co-owner of Minipan. The company's
r_EVOLUTION Line x Artisan Bread handles doughs
with up to 85% hydration.
For versatility, the Fritsch Laminator 300 produces
200 and 1,000 kg (440 to 2,200 lb) of dough per hour or
as much as 1,500 kg (3,300 lb) an hour for slab or block
production, according to Stefan Praller, head of marketing for Fritsch. Such systems could create a continuous
dough sheet 600-mm wide with a maximum belt speed of
6 m per minute to meet high-speed production demands.

But it's complicated
On sheeting and laminating lines, making up isn't hard to
do, although it can get convoluted for mid-sized bakeries
with a vast product portfolio. "The level of automation may
not be compatible for a wide range of products without resulting in a mess of a makeup line with bypasses and take
over conveyors to other processes," Mr. Magistrelli said.
Building in too much flexibility could impact the bot-

54 Baking & Snack December 2019 / www.bakingandsnack.com

tom line. "There becomes a point of diminishing returns
where over-flexibility becomes under-efficiency and under-quality," Mr. Magistrelli explained. "This is the tradeoff: You will design the overall process for one product
and make that the driver, and then the other products
may sacrifice something to run down the same line."
To properly assess the cost of efficiency, bakeries
must determine equipment investments then calculate
how long it takes to amortize them compared with the
increased production output and savings in time and
labor, according to Richard Breeswine, president and
CEO, Koenig Bakery Systems.
Many times, however, bakers cannot say "yes" when it
comes to compromising parts of the process. "We have
customers operating with completely automated bread
lines from mixing to cooling but still forming the breads
by hand in-between for the special handmade touch and
the authentic shape," Mr. Breeswine observed.
To provide efficiency, Coen Nikkels, manager of marketing and business development for Rondo Industrial
Solutions, suggested designing multi-product sheeting
and laminating lines around the bakery's top-sellers.
"This product matrix gives an overview of all relevant
product details and how they are produced up to the
pattern on the baking tray," he explained. "It will not be
possible to design a line that is ideal for all products. Top
5 is mainly based on production volume and the line
will be designed to optimize for these five products."
Keep in mind that such a strategy also provides a path
for lowering overall production expenses in the long
run. "To keep costs down, the larger volume products
can be automated, and as other products take up more
production time, they can be automated as needed,"
Mr. Giacoio pointed out.
Another popular approach involves combining technology to custom design lines based on efficiency as
well as a baker's hard-to-quantify personal preferences,

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