Like painting, coating snack bars requires significant planning and the right skills to create an enticing product that looks as good as it tastes.

Often, just a very fine chocolate layer around 1 mm all around and with a1.5-mm base will do, noted John Price, sales director, Spooner Vicars, a Middleby Bakery company.

“As the snack bar is already rich in flavor, there is no need to add much chocolate,” he explained. “High-quality is enrobed with tempered chocolate, but it can be enrobed in compound depending on the market. No decoration is needed since the snack bar is already rich in ingredients such as extruded nuts.”

To ensure consistent enrobing, bar producers should quickly turn over their icings and coatings. This approach also reduces waste due to product degradation or creating nonconforming products.

“The longer icing and coatings are exposed to atmosphere and the more times the material is recirculated through a system, the faster the material degrades,” said Chuck Sena, director of sales and marketing, Axis Automation. “Ensuring that the material is consumed quickly helps ensure that you are always applying material in the optimal condition.”

Edward Porter, operations director, PTL Machinery, advised using a tight, consistent enrobing curtain to ensure lower variability in bar weights and more efficient use of coating product.

“Ensuring machine environment temperature is an often-overlooked factor in the consistency of enrobed end products,” he said. “By controlling the internal temperature of the enrober with a high degree of accuracy, there is smaller variance in product quality and viscosity, which yields better and more accurate end products.” 

Price recommended using properly designed equipment, such as ambient cooling or forced cooling tunnels, because enrobing can take up a lot of space.

“When applied correctly, the product is second to none. But do the homework first, ensuring the correct speeds and temperatures give you the perfect product at the end,” he said.

This article is an excerpt from the October 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Bar Processing, click here.