Bagels

The bagel production process has been developed to enable bakers to produce high quality bagels in a variety of ways: fresh-baked, made from scratch or mix & baked off from frozen dough or frozen par-baked.

In the bagel production process, temperature monitoring and control is important. Optimal final dough temperature is 75-80°F. Higher temperatures make the process more difficult to control and prone to inconsistency. Retarding is an important step for flavor development and dough relaxation. The required retarding time is typically 12 to 18 hours at 35-42°F. Proofing temperatures vary depending upon the retarding process. If retarded, bagels sit at room temperature for 30 minutes and then proofed for twenty to thirty minutes at 85-90°F and 65-75 percent relative humidity. When no retarding step is used, the bagels go directly to proofing for twenty to thirty minutes at 100-105°F and 65-75 percent relative humidity. Boiling is then used to kill the yeast and stop fermentation; for this to occur the bagel must reach an internal temperature of 130 to 140°F. If bagels expand wildly in the oven, they probably were not boiled long enough or have a yeast level that is too high. The final baking process is usually done at a temperature of 400 to 450°F for 17 to 25 minutes.

In the frozen bagel dough market, optimizing the performance of yeast is the most important criteria impacting bagel quality. In other words, maintaining proper dough temperature is a critical step in keeping yeast dormant. The time between mixing and freezing dough needs to be short. The season and the amount of humidity in the air could contributes to the mixing temperature. A desired mixing temperature is 63 F for frozen dough, compared with 75-80 F for proof-and-bake production.

Frozen dough shall be stored and distributed at -10°F to 0°F. All frozen dough needs a thawing period of 12 hours to 16 hours at 36 to 40°F. A proof chamber is required to maintain the proofing temperature at 55°F and lower humidity, compared to 90 to 95°F and 80 percent relative humidity for make-and-bake product. The proofing time is generally shorter than that of convention dough.

Freeze/ thaw cycling should be avoided during storage and distribution, and once thawed, frozen dough should not be refrozen. Maintaining some balance of control over the thawing and proofing process is one of the biggest challenges associated with frozen dough. The finished product quality is essentially dependent on the finishing process used by the local retail stores.

• Speed new product development and production scale-up

Since the ThermoBiscuit™ can travel with the products through conveyorized lines providing real time display of air and product core temperatures, it is easy to measure and adjust baking and freezing thermal profiles in R&D and replicate the baking process across production lines.

• Implement quality control

With the help of I-Probes to repeatably hold thermocouples in position, the production group can use the ThermoBiscuit to routinely measure key temperatures at consistent locations inside ovens, freezers and products, providing documentary process proof and data for quality control.

• Expedite line 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 problem diagnosis or, when used as a data logger, data can be downloaded wirelessly without waiting for the ThermoBiscuit to come to room temperature. After maintenance operations, it is easy to run the ThermoBiscuit again to verify oven 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. The users can download the data to a local laptop in the destination facility.

For low-volume production
Talking to low-production bakers, we hear about the many different challenges they face; increasing energy costs, rising ingredient prices, the need for faster product development & highly skilled staff, just to name a few. They don’t need their ovens to be challenging too. We agree!

We can help:

• Eliminate waste and inefficiency in baking experiments

ThermoBiscuit™ displays product core temperatures in real time making it easy for chefs and bakers to monitor baking temperatures while watching for color and texture development during the bake. Several customers have told us that they reduced their new product development time by 50% and saved on ingredient costs as well.

• Compensate oven inconsistency


We all know that almost every oven bakes differently. By using ThermoBlade™ to measure product core temperatures bakers do not need to accommodate oven inconsistency. Bake the right way! Monitor product temperature instead of an oven dial!

• Scale up your production

Since ThermoBiscuit™ travels with the product relaying temperature data in real time, it is easy to measure, compare and adjust baking profiles from shelf ovens to rack ovens to tunnel ovens. By taking the guesswork out of process transfer, bakers can quickly transfer and confirm recipes to scale-up production.