The company claims that the sheeting roll configuration of the moulder can lead to volume and cell counts increases of around 10 per cent, as well as offering an improved crumb structure.
This in turn is said to promote better 'spreadability', a whiter loaf, up to 18 per cent softer loaf and a strong, straight sided shape that fills the tin well, particularly important for sandwich producers.
Dan Bassett, APV Baker's bakery business director for the UK and Ireland, said that the company had invested a great deal in research and development to achieve these improvements in dough moulding. "We are now seeing a step change in loaf quality purely as a result of improvements in moulding technology," he claimed.
"Upgrading to the new four-roll moulder offers a low-cost route to the premium quality market for plant bakers: the moulding head can be retrofitted to most existing moulders or supplied as part of a complete new unit. If production costs are a priority, the moulder provides the opportunity to significantly reduce the cost of key ingredients such as yeast, without sacrificing any existing quality aspects."
According to Bassett, the company's research had given it a much clearer scientific understanding of the handling required at the moulding stage in order to minimise damage and improve the quality of the final product.
The result of this research is a design with four pairs of sheeting rollers, each pair having an individually controlled variable speed and variable gap. This improves end product quality by controlling size, shape and length-to-width ratio and allowing tighter coiling, the company claimed. At the same time, the four rollers significantly reduce the stress on the dough through a more progressive thickness reduction.
The moulder also features centralising rollers prior to sheeting that contribute to the control of size and shape by ensuring that the dough is presented in a consistent manner to the sheeting rollers.
The moulder has been designed to function in particular with the Pressure Vacuum option available with APV Baker 'Tweedy' dough mixers, as it allows bakers to retain the high cell count this process creates in the dough. This leads directly to increased volume and improved texture, and a softer crumb, according to the company.
APV Baker is currently exhibiting the four-roll moulder at its new Bakery Innovation Centre at Peterborough in the UK, allowing bakers to run trials on the machine and a conventional three-roll Supertex moulder and help them evaluate the benefits of two different systems.