Pies, Cheesecakes & Fruitcakes

Think of a perfect pie: A good-looking pie with a perfectly scalloped crust edge. The topping cooked up with a nice bit of crispness on top, and the filling isn't overpowered with sweetness. You can almost smell it!

A quality pie begins with the crust. Temperature control is crucial and starts with all the ingredients even before they are mixed together. Whether a pâte brissée or a flaky American style crust is your goal, temperature is crucial to the way fat works into the dough and gluten develops.

Optimum baking temperatures for pies range from 350 to 400°F, while baking times end to run around 20 to 25 minutes. It is important to prevent the pastry crust from drying out prematurely during the baking process. Air flow while baking can have significant effects; using a convection oven or placing pies at different positions within the oven can affect the baking result.

It is also important to monitor the pie filling temperature during and after baking. Even after the pie has been removed from the oven, the filling temperature will continue to rise substantially during ambient cooling. Determining the proper pie baking profiles can help prevent product overcooking and maximize energy saving.

When it comes to freezing unbaked pies, the final product quality will be significantly influenced by the freezing process.

For high-volume pie production

Every day, bakers face the challenge of delivering fresh
delicious pies with consistent taste, appearance and quality.

• Expedite process transfer from R&D to production

  Since the ThermoBiscuit™ can travel with the products through conveyorized lines and revolving rack ovens providing real time display of air and product core temperatures, it is easy to measure and adjust baking profiles in R&D and replicate the baking process across production lines. Frozen pie production requires even more attention to detail; attention to the freeze rate, product loading and distribution in the freezer and so on. Knowing process temperatures from start to finish is the only way to maintain brand quality and taste.

• Implement quality control

  Both Cake-Rib assemblies and I-probe assemblies will greatly speed routine measurements. Using these along with the ThermoBiscuit the production group can routinely measure key temperatures at consistent locations inside the oven and the product, providing documentary process proof and data for quality control.

• Speed maintenance

  When it's time to check oven or freezer performance, ThermoBiscuit collects accurate multi-channel thermal profiles easily. Real-time data collection and display allows immediate oven diagnosis or, when used as a data logger, data can be downloaded wirelessly without waiting for the ThermoBiscuit to cool down. After maintenance operations, it is easy to run the ThermoBiscuit again to verify oven or freezer performance.

• Optimize line efficiency

  Most high-volume bakers run multiple products on the same line every day. ThermoBiscuit can be used to quickly provide an oven profile during product changeover to confirm that the oven is ready and reduce production waste.

• Monitor product quality during transportation

  ThermoBiscuit can be used as a data logger to simply collect temperature history during product transportation. Users at the destination facility can easily download thermal history data to a local laptop and share the data electronically.

A quick link to a pie production costing calculator

For low-volume pie production

We can help:

• Eliminate waste and inefficiency in baking experiments

  ThermoBiscuit displays product core temperatures in real time. It is easy to for the chefs to compare the baking temperatures with product color and textures as the baking is happening. It takes only 10% of a traditional practice to create a new recipe without wasting lots of time and materials.

• Compensate oven inconsistency

  We all know that not every oven works in the same way. By using ThermoBiscuit to measure product core temperatures, the bakers do not need to accommodate the oven inconsistency. Bake in a right way! Monitor product temperature instead of oven temperature!

• Scale up production

  Since ThermoBiscuit can travel with the products on a conveyorized or revolving oven and display product core temperatures in real time, it is easy to use ThermoBiscuit to measure and compare the baking/freezing profiles in batch ovens, large conveyorized ovens and freezers. The bakers can quickly confirm the recipes for production.