Participants from 7 countriesandregion( China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Australia and Taiwan) attended the first International Seminar on frozen bakery technology, organized by Puratos at the Panyu Guest House Conference Centre in Guangzhou, China, on January 16 and 17th 2008.
The objective of the seminar was to give bakery general managers and R&D specialists an overview of the current status of freezer technology in the worldwide bakery industry.
Freezing can be used at 4 different moments during the bread making process. Before or after the fermentation, after partially baking, or once the bread is fully baked. Each of these technologies has both advantages and disadvantages for both the bakery and the end user. "Parbaked frozen technology, for instance, is very convenient for the end user. However, because the breads have already reached their full volume before being frozen, the cost of freezing and transport is relatively high compared to the other technologies", says Frederik Lievens, Director of the Improvers Business Unit at Puratos.
R&D manager Laetitia Domange shared her experience of each of the 4 freezer technologies. "Achieving optimal quality in frozen dough means you have to create the right synergies between the recipe, the bread improver and the process conditions", she states. In unfermented dough, for instance, the objective is to ensure that the yeast activity after freezing remains optimal, as the dough still needs to ferment after defrosting.
Puratos has developed so called "golden rules" for each of the 4 freezer technologies. These guidelines help bakeries to make the right choices when fine-tuning their frozen dough production process. For pre-fermented dough, one of the golden rules explains how to determine the right fermentation time before freezing to combine both excellent freezer stability and bread volume after bake off. How this should be done, was illustrated at the seminar.
The users of frozen bakery products want more and more convenience. This explains the immense success of parbaked frozen breads in Europe and USA. To avoid the major problem of the crust flaking after the first bake, new improver systems have been developed in the past year to allow bakeries to go to an almost fully-baked product after the first bake. This breakthrough Bakevit technology, presented at the seminar, allows users to simply reheat the product in the oven and serve immediately.
One of the main highlights at the conference was the practical demonstration of 2 technologies to produce pre-fermented frozen croissants. Puratos Process Technologist Michel Deknop illustrated that, even in a standard deck oven, these products can be baked off if the golden rules are applied.
"From our Asian Development Centre in China, Puratos will help our customers implement the lessons learned from the seminar in their day-to-day production processes. Our team of trained process technologists is keen to help our customers to do this", confirms Wu Huai Xiang, Director of the Centre.
The conference ended with an overview of 5 strategic considerations that frozen dough bakeries should take into account when investing in these technologies. The importance of the consumer market and some strategies to innovate in this segment were 2 examples.
Ms. Feng Jun, theR&D Managerof HolilandBakery,a local bakery chain with more than 600 shops all over China,attended the seminar and sharedherenthusiasm; "The potential in the frozen technology market is tremendous, while manufacturers interested in this new technology still have quite some basic works to do. Puratos has not only provided ingredients and solutions to baking products manufacturers, but also made available the knowledge on operation process and equipment needed for the application of such technology, whichwould be beneficial for the industry"shesaid.
Mr. Newman Chan, the Associate Director of R&D departmentfrom Yum! Restaurants China told us that he particularly enjoyed the question and answer session, where participants could share different views, as to how they could apply this technology in their business.
The attendance of 130 participants at the seminar and more than 2 hours of questions and answers showed that the Chinese and South East Asian bakery industry is ready to go frozen.