Continuous bread making
Many steps in conventional dough preparation and makeup have been fully automated, but none of the processes is truly continuous. In continuous systems, the dough is handled without interruption from the time the ingredients are mixed until it is deposited in the pan. The initial fermentation process is still essentially a batch procedure, but in the continuous bread-making line the traditional sponge is replaced by a liquid pre-ferment, called the broth or brew. The brew consists of a mixture of water, yeast, sugar, and portions of the flour and other ingredients, fermented for a few hours before being mixed into the dough.
After the brew has finished fermenting, it is fed along with the dry ingredients into a mixing device, which mixes all ingredients into a homogeneous mass. The batterlike material passes through a dough pump regulating the flow and delivering the mixture to a developing apparatus, where kneading work is applied. The developer is the key equipment in the continuous line. Processing about 50 kilograms (100 pounds) each 90 seconds, it changes the batter from a fluid mass having no organized structure, little extensibility, and inadequate gas retention to a smooth, elastic, film-forming dough. The dough then moves out of the developer into a metering device that constantly extrudes the dough and intermittently severs a loaf-size piece, which falls into a pan passing beneath.
Although ingredients are generally the same as those used in batch processes, closer control and more rigid specifications are necessary in continuous processing in order to assure the satisfactory operation of each unit. Changes in conditions cannot readily be made to compensate for changes occurring in ingredient properties. Oxidizers, such as bromate and iodate, are added routinely to compensate for the smaller amount of oxygen brought into the dough during mixing.
The use of fermented brews has been widely accepted in plants practicing traditional dough preparation and makeup. The handling of a fermentation mixture through pumps, pipes, valves, and tanks greatly increases efficiency and control in both batch-type and continuous systems.
Baking and depanning
Ovens
The output of all bread-making systems, batch or continuous, is usually keyed to the oven, probably the most critical equipment in the bakery. Most modern commercial bakeries use either the tunnel oven, consisting of a metal belt passing through a connected series of baking chambers open only at the ends, or the tray oven, with a rigid baking platform carried on chain belts. Other types include the peel oven, having a fixed hearth of stone or brick on which the loaves are placed with a wooden paddle or peel; the reel oven, with shelves rotating on a central axle in Ferris wheel fashion; the rotating hearth oven; and the draw plate oven.
Advances in high-capacity baking equipment include a chamber oven with a conveyor that carries pan assemblies (called straps) along a roughly spiral path through an insulated baking chamber. The straps are automatically added to the conveyor before it enters the oven and then automatically removed and the bread dumped at the conveyor’s exit point. Although the conveyor is of a complex design, the oven as a whole is considerably simpler than most other high-capacity baking equipment and can be operated with very little labour. As a further increase in efficiency, the conveyor can also be designed to carry filled pans in a continuous path through a pan-proofing enclosure and then through the oven.
In small to medium-size retail bakeries, baking may be done in a rack oven. This consists of a chamber, perhaps two to three metres high, that is heated by electric elements or gas burners. The rack consists of a steel framework having casters at the bottom and supporting a vertical array of shelves. Bread pans containing unbaked dough pieces are placed on the shelves before the rack is pushed mechanically or manually into the oven. While baking is taking place, the rack may remain stationary or be slowly rotated.
Most ovens are heated by gas burned within the chamber, although oil or electricity may be used. Burners are sometimes isolated from the main chamber, heat transfer then occurring through induced currents of air. Baking reactions in the oven are both physical and chemical in nature. Physical reactions include film formation, gas expansion, reduction of gas solubility, and alcohol evaporation. Chemical reactions include yeast fermentation, carbon dioxide formation, starch gelatinization, gluten coagulation, sugar caramelization, and browning.
Depanners
Automatic depanners, removing the loaves from the pans, either invert the pans, jarring them to dislodge the bread, or pick the loaves out of the pans by means of suction cups attached to belts.