Baking & Snack - May 2022 - 34

5 GENERATION BAKERS
Left: Jenny Lee Swirl
Bread is packaged
and then sealed
before being boxed
for shipping.
Right: Loaves of
cinnamon swirl
bread are manually
panned and then
proofed for an hour.
At the mixing station, an operator starts manually
weighing and scaling ingredients at 4:30 a.m. Lot numbers
from bags of flour and sugar are entered into the
scale for lot tracing for each batch. This information follows
the batch all the way through to the Kwik Lok packaging
equipment, which prints the lot code on the clip.
Each mixing bowl produces a 500-lb batch that creates
384 loaves of swirl bread. 5 Generation Bakers is
committed to a small batch process. The dough is mixed
for eight minutes in a double spiral Diosna mixer. Two
Hobart mixers are used for the cinnamon and sugar
mixtures and small production runs.
After resting in the mixing bowl for an hour, the
dough is manually chunked and added to the hopper at
the top of the Rondo sheeting line. The dough is formed
into a 2-inch-thick dough band and then reduced to a
¼-inch dough sheet. Cross-rollers maintain the sheet's
width, and after the sheet's edges are trimmed, the extra
is reworked back into the dough band at the hopper.
Once the appropriate dough thickness is achieved,
cinnamon is dusted on the sheet. Jenny Lee Bakery
originally used a smear for the cinnamon swirl, but by
implementing a duster, 5 Generation Bakers switched to
a dry formulation. Scott Baker didn't mind, though, as
the dry formulation prevents too many pockets and irregularities
in the bread. It also allows for more moisture
in the bread.
The dusted dough is then rolled by cone rollers and
cut to the appropriate length and width by a guillotine.
Operators add the loaves into the pans and ensure the
weights are accurate. The weight of the loaf is critical
as the product is baked in an enclosed crimp pan from
Chicago Metallic. Each pan comes with a top and bottom
and closes shut. As it's proofing and baking, the loaf
fills the interior of the pan, creating that iconic crimped
34 Baking & Snack May 2022 / www.bakingbusiness.com
texture. If it's too light, it won't fill every crevice. If it's too
heavy, the loaf risks overflowing in the pan.
After the weights are checked, the pans are placed
onto custom-made racks. Before the racks were designed
to hold the crimp pans, 5 Generation Bakers was
improvising by placing the crimp pans on sheet pans on
racks, but that hindered the airflow in the ovens. By investing
in custom racks, the sheet pans are gone, optimizing
airflow and reducing the bake time by 20%.
The racks go into a Gemini Bakery Equipment passthrough
proofer for an hourlong proof. After that it's
time for a 39-minute bake in one of four Gemini Bakery
Equipment rack ovens. The ovens can hold two racks at
a time, but currently, the bakery only needs to run one
rack at a time, making it easier to get them in and out.
" Sometimes when production runs are catching up to
one another, we'll do two racks at a time, but in general
it's easier on the employees to do one at a time, " Scott
Baker explained.
After baking and an initial cooling, the product is depanned
and placed on cooling racks with their lot tracking
information on clipboards. Once the loaves have
cooled to below 100˚F, they are ready for finishing and
packaging.
For the sweet loaves, Original Cinnamon and
Cinnamon Raisin, they must go through an intensive
manual finishing process, the next section Scott Baker
intends on automating. Four employees bathe the loaves
in butter and then roll them in a cinnamon and sugar
mixture. The finished loaves are then sent through one
of two packaging lines.
A KLR slicer cuts the loaves and with a custom
round loaf guide, they are bagged before being sealed
by a Kwik Lok closure. Then employees box and seal
them for the freezer.
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