Crackers bring added-value opportunities
Date: 21 May 2003
A wide range of profitable product
The traditional cracker, one of the world's most popular biscuits, has evolved into a wide family of products, many of which offer added-value opportunities to the manufacturer. The days are gone when many regarded the cracker merely as a plain biscuit, used virtually exclusively as a carrier for cheese, meat and other snacks.
Today's choice includes soda, water, saltine, sweet and snack varieties as well as the traditional cream cracker; cocktail snacks are another line of cracker.
Shared characteristics of virtually all crackers include an open, flaky structure. There is a high flour ratio, and the laminated or layered dough is strong and elastic, with a high gluten content that has to be weakened by fermentation, enzymes or reducing agents.
Added-value crackers
Adding value to the basic cracker biscuit can be achieved at relatively low cost. Vegetable or meat based inclusions can be added during mixing to present a distinctive taste and texture. An assortment of flavours and textures can be achieved by spraying, sprinkling or dusting the plain biscuit after baking: salt, oil with paprika, onion or herbs, grated cheese, poppy and sesame seeds are typical.
Sugar, cinnamon and malt flavour glazing are all used to produce sweet crackers, a growing sector in many countries. The sugar glazed lemon puff - with or without a filling - is perhaps the best-known sweet cracker.
Adding a sandwich filling between two crackers is a growing method of adding shelf appeal in a highly competitive market. Baker Perkins, who have designed and made cream sandwiching equipment for over 50 years, added the pile pack creamer to their portfolio to provide access to the lucrative convenience/snack market.
This machine uses a patented system to form the piles of two sandwiches commonly found in vend packs. The unique feature is that the two sandwiches are formed one on top of another during the creaming process, and fed straight to a wrapping machine, forming a single seamless creaming/wrapping unit which reduces cost and complexity.
The most recent method of adding value - highly cost-effective and providing a rapid return on investment - involves another unique process and the creative use of the latest servo controlled cut-sheet laminators from Baker Perkins.
This new technique allows a coloured sweet or savoury dough to be placed between layers of conventional dough on leaving the laminator: the biscuits look like a sandwich with a centre filling between two biscuit 'shells'.
The three doughs pass through the gauge rolls together, and the result is a product with added flavour and visual appeal. Manufacturers can add any flavour they wish - fruit, meat and fish are typical.
Another technique, particular popular in the Far East, is ink printing. This option for adding character to crackers can feature up to three colours, and creates the marketing opportunity to boost sales with designs featuring cartoon, television, or film characters; or short-life products linked to sports events.
The ink printing process requires a cracker with a relatively smooth surface. This is achieved by the enzyme option of gluten modification which offers a more even, open and uniform structure.
Today's demand for reduced-fat contents to match a healthy lifestyle extends to the cracker sector, where the 'baked not fried' concept is used for a wide variety of savoury snacks including mini crackers.
This process involves the use of a conventional baking oven and an oil spray rather than a fryer. The rate of application can be very accurately controlled with the latest spinning disc machines. Oil content can be reduced, typically, from 35-40% to 5-15%, and the product benefits from the much wider range of sophisticated textures achieved by the forming and baking process.
'Baked not fried' products can be enhanced by an almost unlimited selection of flavourings, often introduced at the oil spray; existing biscuit production lines can be easily adapted for their production.
Process and control enhancements
The extension of the family of crackers has been accompanied by process and control enhancements that improve quality and consistency, and reduce cost.
The patented continuous fermentation process was developed at Arnotts Biscuits in Australia and is marketed worldwide by Baker Perkins. It produces top quality crackers with the benefits of a reduction in fermentation time from 24 to just two hours; ease of single stage mixing; greater consistency with a reduction in overweight packets; and reduced labour and space requirements.
Traditionally crackers have been made by the batch sponge and dough process - the only alternative has been the 'all-in or straight dough' technique which reduced fermentation time to less than 12 hours, but at the expense of flavour and pack length give-away.
The continuous fermentation process involves separating and optimising the yeast and lactobacillus fermentations to provide a slurry which can be added to the dough mixer as standard ingredients. Flavour and texture profiles can be adjusted at the touch of a button.
Dough lamination to achieve the light, flaky texture of cracker products is a relatively complex process which calls for precise control at every stage. A three-roll sheeter takes either a bulk or metered feed of dough, and forms a compacted sheet by passing it between the three rolls. The dough sheet is then reduced to the required thickness for laminating by a double gauge roll section, before passing to the layering section. Here, a knife cuts the continuous dough sheet into sections, which are laid across a take-off conveyor by a reciprocating carriage.
The traditional space-intensive horizontal laminator has, however, become redundant with the development of compact vertical laminators that bring the benefit of high quality through a more consistent dough sheet.
The Baker Perkins 540 Series cut sheet vertical laminator provides up to 40% savings in floor space compared with previous generation machines. It also provides higher levels of accuracy - a key in maintaining consistent quality - than ever before. The inherent weight control advantages of cut sheet lamination are complemented by automatic knife phasing and a fast stroke rate, which guarantee accurate positioning of the sheets, even at the highest outputs.
The evolution of PLC controls has to an extent reduced the need for operator skill and experience. Precise on-the-run adjustments, diagnostics ability with a graphical user-interface, and enhanced recipe control and repeatability are now standard features. With no change of recipe, a laminator is expected to run throughout the day without adjustment or operator intervention.
Laminated dough is fed to gauge rolls, which must meet the challenge of maintaining accuracy and consistency, often across the wider, high output plants to which many manufacturers are moving.
Deviations from the highest level of uniform dough thickness across the band width can create problems and costly 'give-away'. The Baker Perkins solution has been to engineer additional strength into the rolls.
Traditionally, these were steel shafts with a hollow cast iron tube: Baker Perkins instead uses solid steel rolls onto which a stainless steel surface is added by continuous welding technology. This approach, used in the printing industry, solves the problem inherent within the process, of a very slight deflection in both top and bottom rolls, as the dough presses onto both of them.
For particularly wide plants, there is also the option of heavy-duty units with the roll diameter increased from 300 to 400mm.
The challenges of baking crackers at high levels of output, efficiency and quality have led to several innovations in oven design. High heat input is critical for the cracker product, leading to the choice by most bakers of a Direct Gas Fired (DGF) oven. Many of today's ovens are hybrid, with a DGF section for the first part of the bake, and a convection section thereafter.
Some bakers consider that, early in the bake during product development, air movement makes the process more critical so radiant heat without turbulence is preferred. Later, during the drying and colouring process, many consider air movement acceptable.
The latest generation of 700 Series DGF oven from Baker Perkins addresses the efficiency issue through tighter control of the baking process. The oven takes baking into the age of precise, scientific analysis through a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technique which mathematically analyses, for the first time, airflows within the oven.
This knowledge provided the key to informed design of the internal components of the oven. Eliminating the inconsistencies caused by airflow characteristics increases plant yield through uniformity of bake quality, and virtual eradication of product reject caused by the bake process.
Optimum distribution of heat and airflow across and along the oven band has been achieved by careful arrangement of burners, extraction points and turbulence ducts, devised and tested using CFD.
Measuring typical oven heat distribution patterns with a data logger highlighted the fact that to achieve a consistent temperature across the oven band, burners with up to five adjustable flame sections are often needed. Baker Perkins introduced the new 'Flexiflame' ribbon burner, which meets that standard.
With the 700 Series oven, every function can be controlled from a main panel - although customers preferring to adjust each zone locally can choose keypad interfaces with text display in each zone.
Oven temperature and humidity can be monitored, and operators alerted if there is a discrepancy: for example, a loss or increase in temperature can be corrected before expensive product loss occurs.
Post-oven, information from a Dipix 3D vision system can provide real-time information on biscuit size, thickness, colour, shape and stack height. Waste is reduced because any variance from defined parameters is pinpointed, and appropriate corrective action taken before the product goes out of specification.
Cracker lines can also benefit from all the innovations in automation and control that have transformed the biscuit industry. For example:
- Recipe management ensures rapid, repeatable, start up and product change.
- Pro-active maintenance catches potential problems before they can cause disruption.
- Data capture software to ensure the plant is run as a system rather than a series of disconnected unit machines, contribute to effective resource management
Many biscuit makers wish to carry out product trials before finalising major capital investment, and the Baker Perkins Innovation Centre at Peterborough in the UK is equipped with forming equipment and a multi-media oven. Here, new cracker products can be proven, and samples produced for test marketing.
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