Mass production moves closer to manual skills

‘Homestyle; or ‘southern style’ breaded products, which were originally consumed in fast food outlets, were increasingly gaining popularity in supermarkets, GEA Food Solutions claimed.

However, until recently, industrial processes had compromised the authenticity of such products, delivering below-par appearance, bite and mouthfeel.

GEA has developed a homestyle breader that splits the product stream and feeds products evenly into multiple drums.

Authentic​

Products leave the drums spread evenly across conveyer belts, reducing labour costs by up to 80%. The GEA MultiDrum delivered consistent coating quality with an authentic homestyle look, taste and bite and its compact size meant it took up far less room than single-drum breading lines, the company said.

“This machine makes it possible for a breaded product to look like a traditional hand-crafted product,”​ Professor Dr Herbert Buckenhuskes, director of the food technology department at the Competence Center for Agriculture and Food Business of the German Agricultural Society (DLG), told FoodManufacture.co.uk at the Anuga FoodTec trade show in Cologne, Germany.

“In the future you will have more products that you can’t see have been industrially made​,” said Buckenhuskes. In addition to improving the quality of food produced at high volumes for consumers, one spin-off of the technology was that it cut the risk of product contamination, he said.

Micro-organisms​

“Every hand which doesn’t touch the food is a good hand, because every square millimetre of the human skin harbours micro-organisms,”​ he summed up. “This is one of the reasons that the development of robots is so interesting.”​

Meanwhile, in the field of bakery, Fritsch’s Multitwist twisting machine can reproduce twisted dough products previously only achievable by hand.

The system enabled decorative baked goods to be prepared in a fully automated process, covering all five processes, from cutting and twisting to arrangement in proofing trays, the company claimed. In addition to braided breads, it can also make pretzels, rings, twists or flat baked products, such as pizza strips and crumble bases.

Its tools are monitored using radio frequency identification modules and can be replaced in less than three minutes, offering significant flexibility. The capacity of the machine can be extended by the addition of up to eight modules that can work in parallel.