A dough sheeting plant for Mediterranean baked products

WP Kemper has augmented its PANE dough sheeting plant. A new long molding module and a patented baguette station are now available for the plant.

+For WP Kemper, KEMPER ARTISAN means producing breads and bread rolls gently from a dough sheet, e.g. by using the PANE. The company presented the dough sheeter at the iba 2018 trade fair, with new long-molding modules and a patented baguette station. The designers developed the plant to allow the greatest possible flexibility in the artisan and semi-industrial production of dough pieces, while at the same time enabling a broad product range to be produced. According to the company, the PANE gently processes even very soft doughs to yield dough strands, which it then divides and makes up the dough. It also says top priority is given to gentle processing to preserve its coarse pore structure and to manufacture breads and rolls with natural flavor development, a coarse-pored crumb structure and good freshness retention from Mediterranean doughs.

Accurate weighing technology

The plant has an integrated dough sheeter for automated dough sheet production. Short pathways are designed to simplify handling especially soft doughs. This involves guiding the dough through an S-shaped roller frame. Rolling the dough from right and left is designed to simulate processing the dough by hand. The dough strands are then turned so they are always processed from the top downwards, and are moved uniformly by gravity. This is intended to keep the gluten structure intact. The vertical dough flow also ensures uniform strand formation even when using very soft doughs.

A weighing cell is installed directly upstream of the chopping knife to measure the weight of the dough sheet continuously moving over it. Accurator 2.0 is the company’s name for the weighing technology used here. Fluctuations are immediately recognized by the fully-automatic controller, and the cut length is adjusted accordingly with millimeter accuracy. The company also says that responding before the cut thus enables dough pieces with a very accurate weight to be produced.

A new long-molding module

The company has developed a new long-molding module. A special molding principle is designed to ensure optimum stress distribution in long-molded dough pieces. According to WP, this also allows the PANE to be used to produce split-top rolls without a proofer. Another of the PANE’s special features is its patented baguette station, enabling the integrated production of artisan baguettes in the roundmolding station without using additional modules. The plant can also be used to produce stamped products. The movement of the inner drum in the round-molding station can be varied. This is designed to improve the intensity of the molding process, while making the operation especially gentle on the dough at the same time. This is also true for very soft doughs with a high TA (dough yield). The PANE can round-mold in the weight range from 25 g to 150 g. The capacity of its 5-row model is 10,000 pieces per hour and 800 kg of dough. The modular plant construction method also allows the bread roll plants to be individually customized.