Bakery doughs that are not mixed well or are too hot when they move to the next steps of development are going to create problems later. It’s crucial for them to be in good shape at the beginning to ensure top-quality, consistent baked goods.

Challenges with finding and keeping skilled workers in bakeries are not helping, which means bakers are looking for equipment that is easier to operate and maintain. And everyone wants to improve throughput.

“Quality labor is harder and harder to find. It’s not because people aren’t hard workers. There are just more opportunities for young people to be employed doing many different things,” said Jim Warren, vice president, Exact Mixing, a Reading Bakery Systems company. “The bottom line is No. 1, labor is hard to find, but No. 2, it’s going to be much more expensive.”

That’s why bakers are looking for processes that require less labor. Some recent advances and others that have become tried-and-true tools are available to help bakers find their optimal mixing solutions and solve common problems.

“There is a desire to have fully automated systems where limited human supervision is required during production,” said Shawn Hasley, director of food system sales and services, Zeppelin Systems. “This ensures optimized production with greater efficiency.”

All bakers are looking to improve throughput, although that can be challenging depending on the equipment they have in-house. Bakeries cannot generally snap up the latest machinery as soon as it’s available.

“One of bakeries’ most crucial challenges revolves around balancing product quality and production efficiency,” said Mélanie Gay, marketing manager, VMI. “It’s about ensuring that baked goods consistently meet the mark in terms of taste, texture and appearance, particularly for those items that demand precise control over factors like temperature and pressure while ensuring optimal food safety. Quality criteria are crucial but must always be considered in the context of productivity and output goals, as this fundamentally impacts cost efficiency and overall profitability.”

With lack of labor changing the way baking companies evaluate ROI on capital investment, highly automated solutions like continuous mixing are well-suited to long runs with few changeovers.

“But they also recognize with a fully automated mixing system, you can make products without employee involvement,” Warren said. “In continuous mixing, it’s more about making sure the dough you make is the right dough. You’ll have fewer people in the mixing room, and the people you do have won’t be focused on making the dough but making sure the dough they made is of the quality you expect.”  

Another way to speed up processing is by using a prehydrator, which hydrates the flour before mixing. This can drastically cut down on mixing time by increasing throughput of an existing mixer by 25% to 30%, Warren said. Prehydrators break down the flour into a cloud.

“This cloud of ingredients falls through the water so you increase the surface many times,” he explained. “You can completely hydrate flour in 5 or 10 seconds instead of 3 or 5 minutes. It’s not a finished dough because you haven’t done any development, but you’ve brought the water and dries together instantaneously so it speeds up the entire process.”

These machines can also assist with specialty products that may need a longer fermentation process.

“To expand the variety of products made with mixing, prehydration is an essential process,” Hasley said. “The pre-mixer DymoMix offers direct process control and can start the fermentation process earlier, which saves time and enhances fermentation. This pre-mixing unit can be easily connected directly to the opening and replace a mixer while preserving general hygiene as it ensures a dust-free connection.”

Rapidojet from Bakery Concepts introduces liquid ingredients shot at high pressure to dry ingredients falling inside a vertical metal tube.

“Rapidojet instantly develops gluten structure,” said Ken Schwenger, president, Bakery Concepts. “The result is that we increase yield by 5% to 8%, reduce or eliminate coolant and reduce mix time from about 13 minutes to less than 5 minutes. When minors, such as salt, yeast, conditioners, etc., are added to the existing mixing bowl after Rapidojet, they are simply being folded into the dough. For gluten-free batter and dough, Rapidojet is used as a continuous mixer.”

The technology helps overcome the natural surface tension barrier to hydration of dry ingredients and saves energy by using about 1.5 kW hours per ton of output. And because the ingredients are under pressure for so short a time, Rapidojet adds less than 2°F to the temperature of the materials, Schwenger said.

This article is an excerpt from the November 2023 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Mixing, click here.