The problem and its history
The bakery was making a wide variety of breads and fermented goods using a spiral mixer. Products ranged from pan bread through to baguette to oven bottom breads and soft and crusty rolls. White, wholemeal and mixed grain products were being made. The num-bers of different products required varied according to product types and customer demand.
As the bakery was using a spiral mixer their standard practice was to mix for one standard time; 2 min on slow speed and 6 min on the second, faster speed. Two problems were being observed; one was that products with the same yeast level were giving different proof times and within a flour type, some products were satisfactory while others lacked oven spring.
The analysis
Variations in proof time for the same yeast level have a number of potential causes but are often associated with variations in dough temperature. The bakery used the same flour and water tempera-tures but had noted that this did not always ensure that the final dough temperature was the same coming from the mixer. They had looked to see if this was related to flour or product type but had not observed any correlation.
The presence of oven spring with fermented products is associ-ated with good gas retention in the dough which in turn, is asso-ciated with good dough development. The energy delivered to the dough during mixing is a key component of the development of a gluten structure with good gas retention properties. In general, the longer the mixing time the better the dough development. For the bakery and mixer, concerned mixing times were low but the cho-sen mixing times were based on delivering a particular final dough temperature; raising the dough temperature was thought to cause dough handling problems in the bakery.
The viscosity of the dough in the mixer affects the rate at which energy is delivered to the dough. When mixing to a fixed time the higher resistance of a ‘stiff’ dough to mixing will result in more energy being delivered than to a ‘soft’ dough. Thus, stiff doughs will be better developed and have a higher final temperature than their soft counterparts for a constant mixing time. The levels of added water will vary according to the product type. For example, oven bottom breads will have lower added water levels in order to retain their shape during proving and baking.
The rate and level of delivery of energy to dough is also affected by the size of the dough being mixed with respect to the volume of the mixer bowl and the interactions of the dough with the mix-ing tool. In general with spiral mixers the rate of energy transfer is increased when the dough batch size is reduced which means that development and temperature rise for a given mixing time are increased.
The causes of the problem and its solution
The variations being observed in proving time and product quality came from using a fixed mixing time for all products. This meant that some doughs were optimally developed while others were under-developed and lacked oven spring. The compromise mixing time had been chosen to deliver final dough temperatures which yielded doughs which could be readily processed but the variation in final dough temperature encouraged variations in yeast activity and in turn, variations in final proof time. The variations in dough
batch size confounded the problem which is why the bakery could not establish a clear pattern with their problems.
The solution to the problem was based on the understanding of the relationship between energy and temperature rise during mix-ing and control of the latter by adjustmix-ing the temperature of the water used at the start of the mixing process. The decision as to what water temperature to choose should be based on optimising dough development and steps should be taken to ensure an ade-quate supply of cold water throughout the production run.
The bakery solved its problems by increasing its supply of cold water and by identifying the optimum mixing conditions for each of their main dough types. They began working with a fixed final dough temperature and made the small but necessary adjustments to their initial dough water temperatures. Because they had an in-creased supply of cold water, they found that they could increase their second speed mixing time to 8 min with a subsequent over-all improvement in product quality. They also found that for some product they could raise their added water levels without encoun-tering dough handling problems.
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