Handle with care
With any equipment purchase, bakers know when they’ve found “the one.” But bakers are constantly innovating with more clean label, organic and specialty bread formulations than ever before. What if there’s more to the story?
“The WP/Gemini line of volumetric dividers has recently seen an increase in use for the gourmet pan bread and hearth bread producers,” said Patrick Harp, business development engineer, Gemini/KB Systems. “Our clients are seeing great success in producing many types of organic and specialty products, including artisan breads and rolls.”
Mr. Harp noted that Gemini’s B700 and V900 volumetric dividers have suited these doughs well with a portioning hopper above the divider hopper, which together helps divide the dough evenly and gently while using less power.
Today’s divider technology is shattering many assumptions bakers can make regarding divider capabilities.
“Many bakers have a preconceived idea that piston dividers cannot handle softer doughs or those that require floor time,” said Patricia Kennedy, president, WP Bakery Group. “The WP ‘V’ series dividers can actually handle soft doughs with a great deal of accuracy,” she said, noting that WP’s piston dividers are designed to allow bakers to adjust parameters for that gentle production. “Our fully programmable computer-controlled systems ensure we are always within the correct parameters.”
Bread making can be a punishing process. Dough often endures a certain amount of abuse … but it can only take so much. At some point, it needs some TLC if it’s going to survive.
For starters, a slow increase in temperature is important for high-moisture doughs.
“These products tend to get very sticky even with just a slight increase in temperature,” Mr. Campbell said. In many ways, today’s softer doughs are formulated in such a way that high pressure for high-speed dividing is no longer the quick fix.
“The higher-pressure dividers used in the past to get those high speeds are a problem with these sensitive doughs,” he said. “The divider needs to do the same accurate scaling with less work on the dough.”
On piston dividers, simple additions such as Sottoriva’s hydraulic piston pressure adjustment and adjustable tension on its drum rounding allows for dividing without punishment.
Koenig’s Industry Rex piston dividers feature gentle processing when the dough is pushed into the pistons only as often as necessary to fill them. Its 10-row version has a maximum hourly capacity of about 36,000 pieces with 60 strokes per minute, Mr. Breeswine said. The system also features a portioning system equipped with star rollers.
“They cut only the needed portions, which are regulated by sensors,” he said.
After the dough is cut in the drum, pieces rotate 180 degrees before being discharged onto the intermediate belt.
“This step is particularly important for high processing rates because it allows the dough to rest between portioning and rounding,” he added.
For softer doughs like ciabatta, Koenig offers dough sheeting for dividing, such as with its Menes gravimetric divider.
“This enables a more gentle process and also maintains the dough structure,” Mr. Breeswine said.
Before the advent of low-stress dividing technology, bakers often divided high-moisture artisan doughs by hand. Although the intent was to go easier on the dough than a piston divider, it could often become counterproductive.
“Bakers would just dump the dough out on the bench, cut pieces off and throw it onto a scale,” Mr. Giacoio said. “It was hard to hit the right weight, so they would piecemeal it, throw some on or take some off.”
As a result, the dough quality would eventually suffer.
“There’s a preconception that machines make everything worse,” Mr. Giacoio said. “But that goes against Rheon’s philosophy that if we can’t make it better, we shouldn’t be doing it.”
Water isn’t the only ingredient to consider when dividing. Inclusions such as seeds or grains require dividers to take it easy on the dough. Handtmann dividers handle doughs and inclusions gently enough to minimize any breakage.
