Baking & Snack - November 2020 - 90

OVENS

Baking profiles can formance in Baker Thermal Solutions ovens.
change almost instan " In fact, theoretically we can have multiple products
taneously by focusing in a single oven at the same time, " he said.
more on Btu input than
Mr. Barnes noted that Babbco air impingement ovens
temperature to optimize come with stainless steel interiors that provide hygienic
oven performance.
design and avoid flash heat.
Middleby Bakery
" Flash heat is the bane of a DGF oven, no matter how
By optimizing and
arranging the types of good the cutback or gap control, " he said. " Our air imheat transfer per zone, pingement ovens automatically change damper settings
bakers can achieve the and zone temperatures within minutes, providing exdesired baking profile in tremely quick changeover capability. Products entering
the oven.
or leaving the oven do not suffer from dark or light colAMF Bakery Systems
oring. Because changeover is so quick and waste is not
produced, the utilization is very high, leading to greater throughput. "
Kevin Knott, technical sales manager, Haas, a
BÃ¼hler Group company, noted that 5- to 10-minute
changeovers can be made when using convective heat.
However, that's not always the case with other types of
thermal heat, which can take 45 to 60 minutes to take
full effect.
" Most of today's ovens have automated controls
on dampers and temperatures, controlled by a PLC
with a recipe management system that enables the operator to make the changes in an efficient manner, "
Mr. Knott said.
Ms. Laisne of Mecatherm said fast changeovers
depend on an oven's responsiveness. Mecatherm's
M-TA oven offers direct heat, a powerful fan and
a modulating burner to swiftly refresh
the air flow to the required temperature inside the oven while avoiding
flash heat. Along with recipe controls,
Mecatherm can optimize the steam
damper's settings.
" This feature allows bakers to quickly

90 Baking & Snack November 2020 / www.bakingbusiness.com

set the optimum baking settings to achieve the desired
product quality with minimum energy consumption, "
she said.
Changeover times and temperatures vary on the
type of heat. On baked snack lines, Mr. Zvoncheck said,
changeovers typically take about 20 minutes to prepare doughs and adjust other front-of-the-line settings.
During that period, a DGF oven will begin to overheat,
prompting bakers to shut off burners and increase belt speed to prevent
new products from burning during
the start of the next run. A convection oven, he added, can sit idle and
not overheat because the burner is in
a separate chamber, relying on hot-air
velocity to heat the oven.
While RBS offers DGF and convection ovens, Mr. Zvoncheck observed that the latter
is simpler to operate. A convection oven has only one
burner per zone compared to a DGF oven, which may
have up to 40 burners per zone.
" As you might imagine, the amount of maintenance
spent on those few convection burners is much less, " he
said. " It also gives the operators more standardization of
baking. If you have 250 burners in the oven, they have
many more burners to turn off and on to choose. Rather
than turning on multiple burners on the top and bottom in each zone, all we're doing is simply punching in a
number from zero to 100% to set what convection velocity we want above the belt and below the belt. "
In theory, the baking process seems as easy as 1-2-3,
but it takes a combination of the latest in technology
and process controls to make sure that a wide variety of
products are baked to perfection every time.

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Baking & Snack - November 2020

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