Hybrid Ovens Elevate Baking
Different baked products require different baking profiles and sometimes even different oven configurations to achieve the optimal product. Various types of baking chambers can be combined in hybrid ovens to give the ideal heat transfer during the baking process.
For example, direct gas-fired zones can be combined with convection or indirect radiant technology. Each product has an ideal baking profile, which defines the temperature at each stage of the baking process to achieve good structure, moisture content and color. The specification of the oven zones, their heat transfer mode and their lengths are designed to achieve the required baking profile.
The main reason customers purchase hybrid ovens is their inherent versatility and flexibility. They combine the best characteristics of radiant and convection baking. All have attributes that are ideal for one part of the process but not necessarily all of it. Combining the benefits can create a unit that matches the specific needs of any kind of biscuit, cookie, cracker or bar.
“The fundamental demand is flexibility. Many customers require an oven that can bake every type of biscuit and cracker. Customers that currently bake just one brand of biscuit choose a hybrid oven to protect their future: tastes change and it might be necessary at some point to switch production to another type of biscuit, or produce several different types. They cannot afford to be trapped in a single product environment with an oven that is not adaptable. The oven is the most expensive unit in a biscuit line, and most have a long service life,” Baker Perkins specialists told us.
According to Paolo Betto, sales area manager, GEA, “the hybrid baking technology offers an extremely flexible tool in the hands of the bakers: in cracker production, as an example, while the DGF (direct gas fired) section upfront offers ideal heating power technology for removing most of the moisture, the convection at the end, softly continues the extraction of the little amount of moisture still left inside the dough piece, allowing, at the same time, an optimum, fine-tuned control on the final coloring of the top surface and final moisture level. The technical challenge is represented by the ideal proportion between DGF & convection: deep experience of baking technology is necessary to make the right choice.”
When discussing the various demands they get from their customers, Remco Bijkerk EPM and head of R&D at AMF Den Boer says there is a lot of variation: “from small production ovens / band ovens to change from manual bakery to automated processes, up to real big factories who require ovens of over 100 meters to bake 24/7 at real high capacity. Due to our flexible and modular oven portfolio, AMF is able to help each bakery and factory that needs continuous baking processes and equipment. Customization is always open, engineered to order, configured to order as well as standard solutions – it is what AMF has been bringing to the market for many years.”
For Auto-Bake Serpentine‘s customers, future proofing in today’s dynamic market means introducing new product formats continuously. “Our hybrid oven technologies coupled with our flexible complete line automation enables our customers the ability to quickly and affordably create trendy new products that feed the market’s insatiable appetite for diversified premium products. […] To put it simply, customers want innovative equipment that gives them an advantage over their competition with flexibility to pivot quickly as market trends and demands change rapidly. Large capacity lines are not as desirable as they once were, today dynamic and flexible lines are much more important,” Scott McCally, president, Auto-Bake Serpentine told us.
You can read the rest of this article in the Spring Issue of Asia Pacific Baker & Biscuit magazine, which you can access by clicking here.