Every bakery needs the essential pieces of equipment, but producers in the food industry have to be as competitive as they can be these days. Your products must be of the best quality and your kitchen must operate more efficiently.
For many bakers, the decision to replace old bakery equipment can be a daunting task, but you need to start looking ahead. Newer machines have features that can outshine older models, so investing in them can pay off very well by decreasing your everyday stress and increasing your productivity. If you are looking for ways to improve your workflow and offer your customers a medley of fresh and tasty pastries, it may be time to start thinking about getting a dough divider rounder.
What Is a Dough Divider Rounder?
A dough divider is a machine that helps you divide the dough into equal portions to ensure proper cooking of each one of them. This way, there is less of a chance of burning any bun or roll as they are evenly sized. Introducing a dough divider to your kitchen is a great step towards getting the most productivity from your kitchen.
Dividing and rounding have been extremely time-consuming tasks for a very long time. Both processes were physically hard on bakers’ arms and hands, and very often multiple employees were using up their work time to divide, scale and round dough. But automatic and semi-automatic dough dividers and rounders have changed the way that kitchens process dough these days.
Whether your operation needs hundreds of doughs balls a day or only a few, you can find the perfect machine for your specific needs. You can choose a dough divider rounder that can easily handle most types of dough and save you some time and money. But these are not the only benefits of investing in a divider and rounder machine for your operation, as quality is improved as well.
Dough rounding is the second step in the make-up stage. Dough rounding is the most important step in the production of yeast-leavened bakery products, including pan bread, buns, rolls, pizza and more. It comes after dough dividing, and during rounding, the divided dough piece is shaped into a ball. This helps for easier handling and sometimes it can be coated with dusting flour to prevent dough pickup in the equipment’s product-contact surfaces. This part of the process is between the dough divider and the proofer.
When the dough leaves the divider, it has an irregular shape with sticky cut surfaces and the gas can readily diffuse from them. By stretching the gluten on the outside of the dough, the rounder imparts a new continuous smooth outer skin. This is the main role of the rounder, which creates this new and consistent layer that retains the gas and reduced the stickiness in order to increase its handling.
To match up a divider to the dough, the product and equipment need to get acquainted first. Certain types of formulations may require a slower flow of the dough through an extrusion divider and it can directly affect the scaling accuracy and the output speed.
Water content is a big factor when it comes to dividing the dough. A soft, high-moisture dough requires more care in the divider than a low-moisture or stiffer pan bread dough. As a baker, you need to know how the machine can work with those types before making a purchase. When it comes to getting to know a divider, versatility is essential and the good news is that there are dividers that can handle both soft and hard doughs.
To properly shape the rounded balls, you will have to do some adjustments during dough rounding such as the amount of dusting flour, a variable which is a function of hydration level, dough temperature and rheology. Also, you will have to adjust properly the linear speed of the belt, raceway gap, belt speed, bar or track angle or track length. All of these variables can affect the shape of the rounded balls.
Why Choose a Dough Divider?
Dough that is machine processed has a better consistency compared to a hand-kneaded product because the machine can do a much better job throughout the mixing process. Also, a dough divider machine can help you reduce your raw material costs by ensuring that each dough ball used in your products is the same size and weight.
In line with the above, that kind of standardisation can contribute to the quality of your products as the correct amount of dough will be used for each recipe. Investing in a high-quality dough divider and rounder machine is a great way to produce the finest products for your customers to enjoy.
Choose a machine that’s built to last and will last you longer. A dough divider and rounder machine can make the biggest difference in your bakery business by boosting productivity, efficiency and margins in your kitchen.
In addition to the cost savings in both time and labour, a dough divider and rounder is easy to maintain and allows activities such as inspection, cleaning and sanitation to be performed easily and quickly.