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“The trend is your friend,” goes the well-known saying. But that isn’t necessarily the case with the current trend towards breads from soft dough, especially for retail bakers. The long pre-proofing of up to 24 hours and doughs of high rye content do not make for easy processing. To be able to produce the greatest variety of products at consistently high quality, retail bakers often have to stop their lines, retool them, clean them and expand them as necessary.
Regarding the challenges for retail bakers with processing soft doughs, Michael Gier, Head of the FRITSCH World of Bakery, explains it like this: “For many lines, processing soft doughs requires adding greater amounts of separating agents like oil, for example, to be able to make the dough sheet as true to weight and shape as possible. However, a high use of oil to prevent the dough from sticking has a negative effect on the baking result of the end product, increases the cleaning effort and thus the downtimes during product changes."
The PROGRESSA bread requires minimal amounts of oil
But, what is an obstacle for some is a task for others to solve. A task, for example, for the trained baker and experienced dough technologist Michael Gier and his colleague Fred Dorner, Head of Research & Development at FRITSCH. As an engineer and the former head of component design, Dorner has played a key role in the invention and continuing development of, for example, the fully-automatic MULTITWIST pretzel twister. As experts in dough and dough-processing machines, they and their team presented the first ideas for the compact PROGRESSA bread line as early as October 2020 and discussed these ideas with various customers in the early stages.
They were keen to meet as many of the bakers’ needs as possible with the new solution. Above all, the precision in forming the dough sheet in terms of thickness, length and weight is of decisive importance for downstream processing. A specially assembled team of experts worked almost exclusively on the development of the new bread line for a year.
The results are impressive: with the PROGRESSA bread, FRITSCH is introducing a new solution in the spring of 2022 that is as space-saving as it is efficient. “With this highly compact machine, we close a gap in our portfolio and cater above all to artisanal and retail bakers,” says Fred Dorner.
The large display enables intuitive operation
Depending on product size, the machine can process between 800 and 1,800 kilograms of dough per hour. The advantages of this new and innovative solution had only ever been seen in industrial lines before.
The developers and dough technologists took the opportunity of their regular customer visits to discuss with them on site and learn a lot about their individual requirements when producing all kinds of breads.
“For the new PROGRESSA bread, we looked at comparable systems on the market. From them, we were able to figure out where there is need for improvement so that we can meet our customers’ needs even better,” Fred Dorner describes the approach of the expert team.
He continues: “With our new PROGRESSA bread, even smaller bakeries can produce a wide range of bread specialties with extreme weight accuracy, while being very gentle on the dough, and keeping the use of release agents and cleaning effort to a minimum.”
Breads made with the PROGRESSA bread
The proven industrial line IMPRESSA bread, fitted with the Soft Dough Sheeter (SDS) developed specifically for soft doughs, also served as inspiration for the PROGRESSA bread. “We adapted a forming system from the industrial line to the new line on its smaller scale, and the result is the SDS nano,” says Michael Gier. Because it flours the dough sheet on all sides, there is no need to use any oil at all when rolling the dough out. This allows for greater precision in producing the dough sheet. Thus, the cutting-edge technology developed for industrial customers also becomes accessible to mid-sized businesses. “With the PROGRESSA bread, bakers can process pre-proofed doughs as well as doughs with a high rye or water content in the same quality as on a large-scale line,” Michael Gier emphasises.
The fact that FRITSCH has been part of the MULTIVAC Group for two years benefited the team in the development of the guillotine and weighing system. As a packaging manufacturer, MULTIVAC has a great deal of experience with precise weighing systems. The front weighing unit triggers the guillotine; the second checks the result and corrects the cutting process if necessary. Once the guillotine has cut the pieces out of the dough sheet to precision with the help of the double-weighing system, the dough pieces are ready for further processing. This could be manual processing just as much as it could be using a belt rounder for breads or a baguette forming machine.
The PROGRESSA bread
With customers in mind, the developers of the PROGRESSA bread also paid attention to a compact design. Being only five metres in length, it can be integrated effortlessly into almost any production hall.
“The design of a system also decides how quickly and easily employees can remove or clean individual elements or parts,” Michael Gier says.
The principle is to achieve as many functions as possible with as few parts as possible. During the development, great importance was therefore given to ensuring that all parts are easily accessible and easy to remove. “There are no motors or other electrical parts, such as sensors, on the conveyor belt of the line,” explains Fred Dorner. “This means the machine can be dismantled quickly and, for the most part, cleaned quickly and thoroughly with the steam jet.” Retail bakers can thus switch faster to producing the next type of bread.
All there is left to say is: “Mission accomplished!”
“With our new PROGRESSA bread, even smaller bakeries can produce a wide range of bread specialties with extreme weight accuracy, while being very gentle on the dough, and keeping the use of release agents and cleaning effort to a minimum.“
Fred Dorner, Head of Research & Development at FRITSCH
PROGRESSA bread - bread innovation for artisan and medium-sized bakers
The guillotine cuts precise dough pieces from the dough sheet using the double-weighing system
Processing the weight-accurate dough pieces to loafs
