New premium snacks highlighted at Pack Expo
Date: 15 July 2010
Innovative concepts with high added-value
Technology to make premium snack products with high added-value is a focus of the Baker Perkins presence at Pack Expo in Chicago (booth 6942). Several innovative concepts which utilize the flexibility of extrusion and other processes are highlighted
A new snack concept is the extrusion of flavored croutons. Extrusion is a much simpler and more economic solution for these bagged snacks than the conventional process based on mixing, forming and baking of bread dough. The light, crunchy texture is ideal for snack products and is compatible with a wide range of different savory flavors.
Another original extrusion process provides a thin sheet of dough which is rotary cut before being fried or baked and flavored. This new process makes possible exciting taste and texture combinations with high consumer appeal.
‘Credit cards’ are novel slim, flat, rectangular co-extruded wafers that can incorporate a wide variety of savory or sweet fillings. They may be positioned as snacks in their own right or as ‘dipping’ products – perhaps a peanut butter snack into savory spread, or a tomato filled snack into cheese.
All these ideas utilize the Baker Perkins SBX Master twin-screw cooker extruder, a solid-barrel unit offering process flexibility through modular design, high free-volume geometry and high torque capacity. With the range of barrel diameters available outputs from 225 to 2,000kg.hr are possible.
The SBX Master is the basis of the Baker Perkins Snack Master modular line concept that enables an extrusion line producing direct expanded standard snacks such as corn curls or maize rings to be extended to make a range of high added-value sticks, pillows bars and bites in both plain, shredded or filled forms.
New products can be introduced quickly, and short-life products become a profitable option.
Baker Perkins provides the process and engineering expertise to reconfigure the lines, and works with customers to develop new product ideas, often in the Baker Perkins Innovation Centre, where a comprehensive range of equipment is available for trials. Each installation is individually specified to match the customer’s exact product needs.
As an alternative to conventional frying, Baker Perkins’ innovative hot air expansion process converts extruded pellets into a healthy low-fat finished snack. During traditional frying, snack pellets absorb a high percentage of oil giving them a high fat content; hot air expansion produces snacks of comparable texture and appearance, with a minimum amount of oil being applied at the end of the process for flavoring.
The healthy positioning of hot air expanded products can be further extended through the complete elimination of oil.
Baker Perkins has successfully applied knowledge from their confectionery technology to enable polyol based syrups to carry seasoning and flavors. Polyols are low-calorie sugar substitutes without the sweetness of sugar, and are ideal carriers for savory flavors.
The equipment used for hot air expansion includes the Baker Perkins Thermoglide2 Toaster. Product is conveyed through multiple temperature zones in a fluidized bed that gently lifts and tumbles the pellets to ensure even and consistent expansion.
The Thermoglide2 offers continuous processing with multiple temperature zones to provide more flexibility, greater consistency and better control over the finished product parameters than batch systems. Designed specifically for snacks and similar products such as breakfast cereals, the Thermoglide2 features an effective and compact dust extraction system and an energy-efficient gas heating system. It is available in a range of sizes to suit most applications with outputs from 150 to over 1,000kg/hr.
Baker Perkins offers a range of proven technologies for baking and toasting. Ovens from the Baker Perkins range conventionally associated with the biscuit industry can be adapted for snack products that need to sit on a band – usually larger, flat products such as snack chips, baked potato chips and snack crackers that cannot be processed in a fluidized bed. Radiant or convected heat, or a combination of both in any proportion, is used to obtain the required product texture and color
The Snack Toaster oven is a DGF (Direct Gas Fired) unit with extremely high heat input features utilizing radiant burners, developed specifically for toasting snack products that require extremely rapid processing, such as snack chips. No drying is involved, merely toasting the product exterior.
The Baker Perkins Snack Master concept allows a wide choice of equipment to be added to an existing line. With minimal investment, production systems can be expanded to extend the variety and consumer appeal of end products.
A line making standard, direct expanded products such as corn curls, chipsticks, and maize rings can be extended in stages to produce a full range of high-specification, sophisticated snacks including whole grain / multigrain and co-extruded filled pillows and bars with intriguing shapes, textures and surface patterns.
