All ovens bake differently, and managing the humidity and temperature in your commercial bakery ovens with the Reading Thermal SCORPION® 2 Digital Humidity Sensor and Pan+Dough Probe™ can take your bread manufacturing process to a whole new level.
Reading Thermal, located in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania, has been focused on measuring and researching the commercial baking process for more than 25 years. We manufacture and support the SCORPION® 2 Profiling System and Data Logger which is now a standard in the baking industry.
The SCORPION® 2 enables you to monitor actual in-process conditions and get the critical information you need to correct problems and maintain optimum process control. This powerful diagnostic tool will help you improve your proofing, baking, cooling and freezing processes.
There are four essential oven baking parameters – temperature [air, band and product core]; airflow [velocity]; energy transfer [heat flux]; and humidity. They are interconnected and work together to control the quality of your final products. Once you have invested in the full-featured SCORPION® 2 Profiling System, you will be able to add smart sensors at any time to explore all of these oven variables.
Measuring Oven Humidity
Humidity is the amount of water vapor in the air. As your products bake, they use the available moisture in your oven. Without humidity, the quality and texture of your products will not turn out as expected. High oven humidity can lighten the crust color of baked goods and prevent it from burning. Lower humidity typically results in crustier bread.
The new SCORPION® 2 Digital Humidity Sensor provides a better way to measure humidity in your oven, proofer, dryer and cooling tunnel. It measures the absolute moisture content of the thermal environment in both heating and cooling processes. The sensor travels through the oven with your product, yielding a precise profile of the moisture the product experiences.
The Digital Humidity Sensor is engineered to be compatible with direct gas fired (DGF) ovens. Unlike oxygen sensor technology, which can be off by up to 25% as a result of combustion gases in DGF ovens, the accuracy of the Digital Humidity Sensor remains the same regardless of the oven platform.
Long bake times and the need to produce the Bake Cycle S-Curve have also led Reading Thermal to design solutions just for the bread and bun baker, including our Pan+Dough Probe™. This dual probe unit is placed under the bread or bun dough and simultaneously captures the pan/dough interface temperature and the dough core temperature.
A copper plate is placed into the pan and remains fixed at the same single point during its entire passage through the oven. The Probe provides accurate repeatable results that cannot be achieved with hand-placed thermocouples.
If you are experiencing inconsistent product quality in your commercial bread baking process, monitoring your bakery ovens with Reading Thermal’s Scorpion® 2 Digital Humidity Sensor and Pan+Dough Probe™ will give you a precise picture of what is happening inside your oven. Call us at (610) 678-5890 Ext. 2, or contact us online to learn more about our state-of-the-art products.