Why is oven profiling critical for commercial baking? Profiling your commercial bakery ovens can take your baking processes to a whole new level. The SCORPION® 2 Profiling System and Data Logger from Reading Thermal can help.
Reading Thermal, a product brand of Reading Bakery Systems, is headquartered in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania. Connecting our different smart sensors and sensor arrays to the SCORPION® 2 Profiling System and passing them through the oven with your product enables the system to capture the four main baking parameters: temperature (including the temperature of both the air and the oven belt surface), heat flux (energy transfer), humidity, and airflow (velocity).
Importance of Oven Profiling
Oven profiling is important for product quality and consistency, for example:
- Insufficient heat during baking can cause crusts to be brittle or dry, and can create products that are too light in color and structures that are too dense.
- Excessive heat will cause moisture to evaporate too quickly, and the dough to rise unevenly. It can also cause the bottoms of loaves to burn before the crusts brown correctly.
- High oven humidity can lighten the crust color of baked goods and prevent them from burning.
- Lower humidity typically results in crustier bread.
- Lack of humidity in a cracker oven cause excess blisters to develop, which burn easily, causing undesirable dark spots.
- Excessive heat fluxes in industrial tunnel ovens can yield poor quality products in terms of color, texture, height, crust hardness, crumb moisture, and flavor.
- Air velocity influences the coloration, texture, firmness, and baking time of the final product.
What Our Profiling System Can Measure
Connecting smart sensors and sensor arrays to the SCORPION® 2 Data Logger and passing them through the oven with the product, enables the measurement system to capture the four main baking parameters:
Heat Flux
Oven heat flux is the amount of energy transferred per unit area per unit time from or to a surface. The SCORPION® 2 Heat Flux Sensor is designed to measure convective and radiant heat fluxes at product level and display the results in Btu/hr·ft2 or W/m2.
Temperature
The Scorpion® 2 Temperature Sensor Array is designed to measure temperature at product level, in fixed positions across the conveyor, and delivers a precise picture of temperatures from side-to-side and end-to-end.
Humidity
The new SCORPION® 2 Digital Humidity Sensor has a breakthrough design that provides a better way to measure humidity in your oven, proofer, dryer and cooling tunnel. It travels through the oven with your product, yielding a precise profile of moisture experienced by the product.
Air Velocity
In a radiant oven, the airflow comes from the moving conveyor, the exhaust system, and natural combustion air currents. In a convection oven, the airflow comes primarily from the air distribution plenums. Measuring the oven air velocity with the SCORPION® 2 Air Velocity Sensor will help you spot airflow differences between baking zones and unwanted air currents at the entrance or exit of the oven that result in inconsistent baking.
Learn more about why oven profiling is critical for commercial baking from the experts at Reading Thermal and explore the benefits of our Scorpion® 2 Profiling System. Call us at (610) 678-5890 Ext. 2, or contact us online for more details about our innovative products.