Using the latest advances in coextrusion technologies now allows for the high-volume production of delicate, artisan-type handheld pies and filled, hot appetizers.

Andres Lopez, business development manager, Handtmann, said the company’s Triple Co-extrusion system produces pastry snack products where the smooth or chunky core ingredients are covered by an intermediate filling before both are finally enclosed in an outer layer of dough. Typically, these snacks contain 25% dough, 60% core ingredients and 15% intermediate fillings with an accuracy of 1 gram.

To create filled pies, snacks and appetizers, the Rheon KN551 co-extruder can take a chunky savory filling from one hopper and wrap it in a high-quality pie dough from another hopper without trim or scraps, noted John Giacoio, Rheon USA. 

He added that today’s automation provides significant labor savings. A co-extruder with a 4-foot square footprint can produce hors d’oeuvres and handheld pies with speeds of up to 100 pieces per minute.

Changeovers are often 5 minutes or less.

“Not only are we automating the filling being placed inside and wrapped by the pie dough, but we can automate the panning of these products as well as placing the pans into racks,” Giacoio said. 

Rick Hoskins, chief executive officer of Colborne Foodbotics, has seen an increase in demand from small to mid-size companies for affordable automated systems with less capacity than a high-speed line.

Previously, he said, smaller, semi-automatic lines would require four to five production workers while today’s operations require one to two people to run.

This article is an excerpt from the August 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature one Pie Processing, click here.