Baking & Snack - June 2018 - 38

LA MIE CALINE

Heightening the La Mie Caline experience
As it further expands across France, La Mie
Caline refines the concept for its stores
and diversifies its menu with everything
from guilt-free to gourmand at affordable
prices ranging from €4 to €9 for a snack or
meal. In 2012, the chain added a new logo,
image and store layout that now allows its
customers to dine in or take out.
Since expanding out of its home territory
in west central France, La Mie Caline stores
have been located in the center of communities with populations greater than 10,000.
However, new stores are opening on the
periphery of towns to heighten its presence
in the highly competitive foodservice market. Most recently, La Mie Caline opened
a store in Gare de Lyon in Paris - the first
outlet in a train station.
About 2,500 people work in the chain's
network. More than 60 company employees work daily to deliver at least 1,000
hours of training to start up 10 to 15 franchise stores each year.

Freshly baked baguettes
stream out of the oven
toward ambient cooling
and a spiral blast freezer.

par-baked pizzas travel through a 15-ft cooling tunnel to
set the cheese and toppings before entering an ambient
spiral cooler and a blast freezer set at -30˚C (-22˚F).
In yet another room, the bakery puts out beignets
and yeast-raised donuts. After mixing and makeup, the
round pieces are racked and rested before being manually loaded into a Reimelt fryer for 1 ½ minutes. The
light, airy dough pieces float atop the oil as they fry,
and when flipped over, they leave a signature white
ring around the center of the donuts, which are later
dusted with powdered sugar at La Mie Caline's bakery
shops and eateries.
Furthermore, in the segregated organic department, a
WP Kemper divider feeds a Rondo Doge makeup system and multi-deck oven to create a variety of organic
breads, mostly for an outside retail customer. Overall,
90% of the bakery's business is dedicated to La Mie
Caline franchisees while the remainder supplies a growing retail business outside its core chain.

Creating authentic baguettes
In the newest part of the bakery, the workhorse of
the bakery turns out 3,200 of its top-selling authentic baguettes per hour. Here, the VMI inline carousel mixing system relies on three spiral mixers and 12

38 Baking & Snack June 2018 / www.bakingandsnack.com

fermentation tanks to produce highly flavored doughs
with ample rest time to relax the batch.
An automatic bowl lift takes the dough to a
Mecatherm Tradivider that turns out 36 pieces at a
time that are deposited on the belt below. After receiving a light flour dusting, a conveyor belt carries
the pieces up to an overhead intermediate proofer for
15 minutes to provide additional rest time. Afterward,
a centering station properly aligns the pieces as they
enter a dough roller that flattens them before they
glide through a curling chain and under two pressure
plates to gently form and elongate them. An extender
consisting of a series of belts mimics the movement of
human fingers to gently stretch the pieces to 46 cm in
length. They then travel on 800-mm-long peel boards
to a Mecatherm twin-module vertical proofer for one
hour.
Next, an adjustable, automatic water system accurately scores the pieces. Mr. Babarit suggested that using water scorer instead of razors or knives eliminates
the risk of metal or other foreign matter getting into
the products. All lines, he added, provide metal detection, and the bakery is exploring X-ray technology to
add another layer of food security.
The pieces now bake in a Mecatherm three-deck

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Baking & Snack - June 2018

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