For most consumers, baking is a bit of a mystery. But as a food manufacturing industry professional, you understand that baked goods are the result of an exact science that takes into account precise measurements, chemical reactions, and strenuously developed techniques that took years to perfect.
As in any science, new technologies emerge every day, showing us that the possibilities in the baking industry are essentially limitless. Whether you run a large, wholesale operation or an independent niche bakery that markets direct-to-consumer, industrial automation tools and information controls from EZSoft can help you cut costs and increase productivity with fewer resources.
Automated technologies in the bakery industry are constantly evolving. Let’s take a look at a few new latest bakery innovations you should know about this year.
Continuous mixing
Bakeries that demand consistent, high-quality products, reflecting the same outcome every time, rely on precise continuous mixing technology. The latest industrial automation solutions for the bakery industry all you to mix your dough en mass while maintaining accuracy levels that were previously unachievable.
Automated mixers for bakeries come in a range of sizes, and the equipment can be customized to meet your specific needs. Automated software solutions from EZSoft let you monitor your entire mixing process through an advanced control system. This technology allows you to mix essentially anything and make precise adjustments, swiftly and easily on the fly.
Vacuum cooling
Vacuum cooling chambers have been in use for some time. However, in recent years, new developments to the technology have started to garner more attention to this alternative to traditional cooling methods.
Since time immemorial, baked goods have been left out on a rack or cooling tunnel after they’re finished with the oven. The main issue with this method is the time involved. In addition, when moisture escapes your baked goods, it can compromise the consistency and accuracy of your final outcome.
Vacuum cooling technology solves many of the common problems associated with traditional cooling methods. Foremost, vacuum cooling extracts heat and moisture at a faster rate. Once the baked goods leave the oven, they’re immediately placed inside the vacuum chamber, where the ambient pressure is higher. The effect changes water’s boiling point from 100 degrees Celsius down to 30. This enables faster more efficient evaporation and provides for a more consistent end product.
Digital humidity monitoring
Digital humidity sensors are essential for consistent and accurate baking because they allow you to maintain the correct levels inside the oven at all times. A new generation of digital humidity censors has given bakeries more accurate digital readouts than were previously unattainable. These applications work not only in ovens but also in your proofers, cooling tunnels, and dryers.
Humidity readouts appear on a digital display that lets you make adjustments to establish the ideal humidity for your baked goods. This allows for improved quality control to ensure better overall outcomes as you render consistent, higher-quality goods with longer shelf lives.
Wire cutting
While you might be familiar with cutting machines, their latest evolution has taken processes such as biscuit production to new heights. The latest generation of wire cutting machines provides speed and accuracy levels the bakery industry hasn’t seen before.
The latest wire cutting industrial automation solutions include a touchscreen interface that lets you streamline control over your wires to create virtually any design you want. The mechanisms support essentially any weight and quantity you can program in, and the speed and accuracy levels of these machines are unsurpassed.
The automated wire cutting process allows you to generate a vast amount of products with a consistent outcome over a short time. New wire cutting machines let you reduce your mixing intervals while increasing accuracy.
3D X-ray bread inspection
Before 3D quality inspection technology, industrial-scale bakeries that produce a vast amount of breads for wholesale distribution have struggled to understand what’s going on beneath the crust. One common issue plaguing larger bakeries is fermentation process mistakes that form wholes in the bread loaves.
Once these holes develop, the bread’s quality level degrades, contributing to consistency and marketability issues. In response to the problem, companies have engineered 3D X-ray food inspection technologies that scan the bread and display it as a 3D model that can expose imperfections inside the loaf.
Bakeries couple these instruments with an automated rejection process that discards badly formed loaves, detecting them early on and removing them from the line. This ensures that only the highest quality loaves find retailer shelves.
Hydro bonding
As mentioned, baking is an exact science. With that in mind, several things can go wrong, even before your products are placed ever placed in the oven. One of the most common areas where bakers tend to fall down is the mixing process. Hydro bonding technology, however, solutions by enabling a process that ensures can render the same dough at each pass. It helps to hydrate your entire mixture without incorporating additional heat before placing it in your mixture. The biggest advantage of hydro mixing is that it allows you to achieve more even moisture distribution while reducing mixing time and energy consumption.
Automated precision spray controls
Automated spray control systems deploy spray nozzles with a manifold, depending on your requirements, to provide almost instantaneous variations in flow rates that are more accurate and efficient than traditional coating methods like enrobing or manual lading systems. These industrial automation solutions optimize the spraying of materials such as chocolate, butter, fat barriers, water, oil, sugar slurry, and other viscous materials.
When you have access to precision delivery, you can significantly reduce materials waste and start saving immediately after implementation. Large-scale bread manufacturers can benefit significantly from automated precision spray controls after conserving as much as 15 percent of their materials while improving facility hygiene and shorting their cleaning times.
Consult with one of the automation experts at EZSoft today
If you’re wondering to yourself where to find industrial automation companies near me, connect with one of our food and beverage manufacturing specialists now. To learn more about streamlining your production with the latest industrial automation tools, complete a request for contact online or dial (484) 568-5040.
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