The trend towards breads made from soft doughs with long pre-proofing times of up to 24 hours, and often a high rye content, poses major production challenges especially for mediumsized retail bakers. To be able to produce as many different products as possible at consistently high quality, a production line simply has to be uncomplicated to retool, easy to clean and ready to expand if necessary.

To meet this demand, FRITSCH has launched a completely new bread line - the PROGRESSA bread. Depending on product size, the PROGRESSA bread can process between 800 kilograms and 1.8 tons of dough per hour. The new line combines a sophisticated hygienic design with highest product quality on a small footprint.

Hygienic Design
"The design of a system decides how quickly and easily employees can remove or clean individual elements or parts," says Michael Gier, the Manager of the FRITSCH World of Bakery. The principle is to achieve as many functions 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, in the drive compartment of the line," explains Michael Gier. "This means the machine can be dismantled quickly and, for the most part, cleaned quickly and thoroughly with the steam jet."

Another big plus of the PROGRESSA bread is that the amount of oil needed for processing the dough sheet has been reduced to a minimum. "The advantage of our soft dough sheeter SDS nano is that it flours the dough sheet from all sides. To flour the sides of the dough sheet, we use fold-up belts", explains Michael Gier. This flour-dusting on all sides means there is no need to use oil at all for the sheeting process. This lowers the cost of oil consumption and reduces the effort of cleaning enormously. On top of that, this prevents oil inclusions in the dough, which in turn guarantees excellent baking results of the finished breads.

Product quality
"With our SDS nano and the Soft Dough Roller (SDR) we get a uniform dough sheet which is processed very gently to preserve the structure of the dough. This is the basis for the high-quality products on our line", Michael Gier describes.

The fact that FRITSCH had been part of the MULTIVAC Group for two years benefited the developers regarding the weight accuracy of the products. As a packaging manufacturer, MULTIVAC has a great deal of experience with precise weighing systems. FRITSCH were able to benefit from this know-how due to a strong cooperation within this project. The weighing system of the new bread line is equipped with two weighing units. The dough sheet is first weighed before the guillotine. Once the desired weight is reached, the guillotine is released and the dough sheet is cut into individual pieces for further processing. The second weighing is done behind the guillotine. If the weight of the dough pieces deviate from the target weight, the cutting process is corrected accordingly. This ensures an outstanding weight accuracy of the products.

Once the dough pieces have been cut to precision by the guillotine, there are different options available. Manual processing also possible, for example, by using a baguette wrapping table. In addition, FRITSCH offers a feeding system specially tailored to the line. With this lift tipper, customers can refill a maximum amount of 250 liters to ensure a fast process.

With the PROGRESSA bread, bakers can process pre-proofed doughs as well as doughs with a high rye or water content with the same quality as on a large-scale line," Gier emphasises. This makes the new system attractive not only for medium-sized businesses but also for industrial customers: being only five metres in length, it can be integrated effortlessly into almost any existing production hall.