Cooling Power of Cryogenic Gases
Chilling Baked Goods and Confectionary
Many dough or mix formulations require precise temperature control to achieve high-quality, consistent results. Chilling can prevent warm dough temperatures from reducing quality and line speeds, while also protecting meltable ingredients or temperature-sensitive additions to the mix. Warmer summer months can make temperature control more challenging, but even week-to-week and day-to-day variations can lead to inconsistent products.
Flour cooling with cryogenic gases is one of the most effective means of regulating dough temperature. We’ve developed a unique in-line flour cooling system called ACCU-CHILL® IC that utilizes the precision of cryogenic cooling by adding liquid nitrogen (LIN) or liquid carbon dioxide (LIC) to flour or other dry ingredients (sweetener, shortening and yeast/leavening) as they are conveyed to the mixer. Advantages of cryogenic chilling include adaptability to changing production levels and batch sizes, as well as to hourly, daily or seasonal changes in temperature.
Cooling Dough During Mixing and Blending
Our ACCU-CHILL chilling solutions are also ideal for temperature control during mixing and blending. Injecting LIC or LIN directly into the mixer offers superior cooling results and repeatable batch-to-batch quality. We offer both top- and bottom-injection systems.
In dough and batter preparation, dry ice-also known as CO2 snow-can maintain the consistency of ingredients like butter or shortening by eliminating smearing and retaining plasticity. CO2 snow chilling also prevents sensitive ingredients from melting.
And once your dough has been mixed, chilling can help optimize forming, portioning and cutting processes.
Before packaging, baked goods must be cooled to about 21°C (70°F). Without proper cooling, the product can be too tender, overly moist and prone to breakage. Our ACCU-CHILL cooling technologies can help in the careful handling of baked goods to facilitate further processing steps such as slicing, bagging and wrapping.