Baked to a tee

Related tags Baking Oven

Fast, energy efficient ovens and cookers that result in good looking products and also provide excellent taste and mouthfeel, are in high demand. Lucia Cockcroft reports on some of the latest equipment now available

The huge growth in ready meals since the late 1990s is fuelling demand for more novel food variants and is having an impact on the equipment used to produce them. For example, demand has risen for chargrilling and bar marking cooking systems, which replicate griddle or barbecue cooking processes.

Demand for ready meals has grown consistently over the last 10 years and it shows no sign of slowing down, says Malcolm Fleming, director of Cambridgeshire-based oven and grill manufacturer Frampton International. "The range of ready-made meals has changed out of all proportion since the early TV dinners and the demand for high quality meals has also grown," he claims.

Chargrilling systems often make use of a heavy-gauge stainless ladder-type belt, with rungs pitched to give the required bar mark. Grills are operated at between 600°C and 700°C. Little fat is deposited in the collecting systems as most is ignited by the high temperatures used. The edges of food blackens, giving a traditional charred appearance and taste.

Bar marking has become popular in fast food outlets as well as in the ready meals sector, says Fleming. Breads such as panini and pitta are popular to have bar-marked; as well as chicken, steak, burgers, sausage, vegetables, fish and bread products.

Ian Wallace, sales and marketing director for Double D Food Engineering, has also seen a growth in demand for bar marking products -- in particular from European, North American and south-east Asian companies looking to use the method for meat and poultry. However, the technique is also used on sausages, burgers, courgettes, broccoli, mushrooms and red peppers.

Double D has now modified its chargrilling, searing and bar marking unit to provide double-sided chargrilling and searing. This, claims Wallace, leads to an improvement in the taste and appearance of the finished product, as well as reducing time and giving cost savings.

Beacon Foods, a Powys-based supplier of cooked vegetables and flavourings for prepared meals, has used chargilling for the past six years, and bar marking for the last two. By applying the correct amount of heat to ?wet products' such as courgettes, it is able to produce a grilled and seared effect.

Md Edward Gough says bar marking, increasingly in demand, gives a completely different flavour to standard roasting -- visually, the end result is striking, he says, with an authentic "just come off the barbecue taste"

Time and cost pressures

Across the board manufacturers are looking to reduce the time and cost of their cooking processes, says marketing manager for APV Baker, Keith Graham.

"The focus is shifting more and more towards price," claims Graham. "At the same time, we still have to make a reliable oven that will bake well, in addition to providing reliability, service and support."

He continues: "If you want to stay in business, you have to be able to deal with low price competition. All the time it's a question of balancing cost with other factors such as quality."

The drive for quality is also reflected in demand for an even bake, says Graham, especially in the plant bread market.

"People want to see that products look the same across the oven," he says. "Visual appearance is a good indication of quality and a measure of whether the process is under control."

This is a sentiment echoed by Jeff Bownds, marketing manager at Mono Equipment. Particularly, he says, with the recent resurgence in artisan bread baking: "As Artisan baking comes back into vogue, bakers are increasingly looking to produce traditional products at a high standard," he says. "Bakers are looking for an even, mellow bake, at a cost-effective price."

Mono's French sister company, Bongard, introduced a steam tube oven in summer 2003 -- an old concept, Bownds says, that has been refined and backed by modern construction and control techniques.

The ovens can be powered by either oil or gas and work via quarter inch tubes winding their way around the deck. Each deck is fitted with two or more glass doors to give energy savings when unloading part of a deck.

Cost-savings can be another benefit of this type of oven, adds Bownds. Raven Bakery in Essex claims a 60% reduction in its gas bill since a Bongard Cervap oven was installed.

Larger capacity steam tube ovens can also be used in the plant bakery market, with automatic unloading through rear doors and a loader/setter.

Speed and consistency

The Climate Change Levy -- and the promise of an 80% reduction in the levy if energy efficiency is improved by 2010 -- has put pressure on manufacturers to be more energy-efficient than ever.

Convection ovens have been found to be around 23% more efficient than conventional ovens. Using fans to circulate hot air around food as it cooks, the motion of the air increases the rate at which heat is transferred to the food. As a result, convection ovens cook more quickly and at lower temperatures to achieve the same result as conventional ovens.

APV Baker's new Jetcirc convection (handling plant baking products such as cookies, biscuits, bar products, pies cakes and pastries) claims a 30% reduction in bake time and a step towards a more exact regulation of the baking process.

The oven works on the basis of a stable airflow within the baking chamber. Air circulates above and below the product, with the conveyor band returning separately to the fan before re-circulation (as opposed to a single circulation fan inlet, creating uneven heating).

With speed and consistency also in mind, Olivier Sergent, president of French industrial oven manufacturer Gouet SA (distributed in the UK by EPP), says customers are requesting an ultra-efficient baking process with minimal moisture loss.

This has led the company to design the ?triple-effect' tunnel oven, popular with the plant baking sector. The oven allows the operator to precisely control the amount of convection and radiation on the baking surface at any time during the baking process.

By way of illustration, Sergent uses the example of a pain au lait. The oven heats the baking surface intensively at the start. The application of radiant heat is then followed by high-turbulence baking to heat the core of the product quickly, with little loss of moisture.

The type of airflow provided with such oven operation shifts the emphasis away from the operator and it provides a more scientific approach to baking.

touch screen control

There is an important cultural change taking place, claims APV Baker's Graham. Rather than ovens operated by knobs, dials and levers, there is a move towards touch screen systems that are easier to use and offer less margin for error, he adds.

"Operators can understand in a lot more detail what's going on and safeguards can be built into the system," he says. "The method has taken off over the last five years and in another five years I can see it becoming the norm."

He predicts fewer, more skilled operators running production lines in a few years time.

Bownds also reports a trend for oven controls to become bigger and bolder, with large colour graphics indicating elements such as the rise and fall of temperatures, in both numerical and graphical form. Screens tend to be larger, in full colour, with longer menu names and a faster scroll-through, he claims. The large text is linked to key baking criteria, for example, time and temperature.

"Over the last few years control systems have developed so they are pretty high tech, but not so much that they will confuse the operator," he says. "Features such as large colour graphics allow the operator to keep track of how the bake is going from the other end of the factory."

Other features of these user-friendly control panels can include a prominent countdown timer and a timer graphic that turns from yellow to red to alert the operator that the baking phase has ended. FM