All major and minor ingredients, including water, are scaled by computer on
the Pfening system and pneumatically transferred to the proper mixer. Micro ingredients, scaled manually, also move automatically to the mixer after the operator dumps the batch into a pneumatic staging station. Cake donut flour and mixes, from DCA and Pillsbury, are handled in bags because of the high shortening content. During construction, Granny's extended the flour system to supply the two mixers installed in the new section.
Doughs mixed for the new fourth line enter the system through an automatic Moline table. Her e bakery produces rings, fingers and shells, averaging 1,600
doz per hour, depending on size. Honeybuns, fritters and the new donut croissants are made on the original yeast line.
On the automatic makeup line, yeast raised donut dough is sheeted, dusted, docked, cut and trimmed, with excess dusting flour removed by vacuum. The system produces evenly-relaxed donuts with smooth, silky dough surfaces. Computer controls synchronize the speed of the line with the proofer.
Yeast-raised donuts are cut four-across but enter the proofer eight-across. Spread lanes carry four pieces forward slowly enough to allow the next row of four pieces to catchup. The row of eight is then released to a reciprocating conveyor that automatically feeds the proofer trays.
By keeping the proof box full- difficult to achieve with older, manually loaded systems - Granny's earned an 18% increase in pounds per hour. Consistency of the finished product improved, too.
"These are the types of technical advantages a baker must have to stay competitive in the market," Mr. Rosenblum said.
Granny's "dry" proofs its yeast-raised items. "Wetter proofing creates a skin on donuts that absorbs more oil," Mr. Rosenblum explained. "Bread likes a wet proof, but donuts don't."
Thus, computer controls provide important advantages to proofing operations. When humidity within the chamber changes, the system automatically compensates by adjusting damper settings and air flow.
Yeast-raised donuts fried at Granny's Kitchen have a very thin skin and very little oil pickup. "If you want fat in the donut, it should be in the formula. Don't rely on pick-up during frying," Mr. Rosenblum said.
The need for accurate control also led the bakery to adopt Belshaw MSPF technology for its cake donut systems last year. The computer-run system monitors and adjusts weights on all heads, across the depositor, automatically.
"This takes the guesswork out of controlling the weight of cake donuts, making consistent, uniform products," Mr. Rosenblum said.
The bakery also markets a line of frozen donut doughs and recently added to its production capability. Two new Peerless 1,200-lb mixers make a dough every 12 minutes. Like the other Peerless mixers in this plant, these use glycol chilling for their bowls and patented Cold Bar systems. Bowl design for these horizontal mixers differs from that of bread mixers in the positioning of the bar, among other things. Frozen dough must be stretched and folded over the chilled bar in order to achieve optimum dough characteristics.
FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING. This bakery routes donuts coming out of fryers to a maze of filling, topping, finishing and packaging systems. To facilitate this movement, engineers at Granny's Kitchens designed and installed both fixed and mobile conveyor lines that link fryers and coolers to many different downstream operations. The bakery can also split the flow of donuts to make different items during the same day in the same hours - important to Granny's just-in-time UM approach to manufacturing.
With the addition of the fourth line, the bakery moved to three shifts daily on a five-day weekly schedule. Maintenance takes place Saturday and Sunday or during the third shift in slower months.
"It's better to schedule a line down for maintenance,"Mr. Rosenblum said, "than risk a breakdown during production."
Coolers and freezers are operated by computer. Typical temperatures for the blast freezers is -12'F (-24'C), with holding freezers maintained at 16'F (-9'C). Inside the blast freezer, fans drive air through refrigerated coils, reaching speeds of 150 mph. Plenums and shrouding inside the freezer diffuse the movement of the cold air, directing it onto the product and away from the spiral's non-product zones. As the cold air blasts over the the warm products, it picks up heat and moves it away from the donuts. The air then recirculates through the coils to continue the freezing process.
and faster. During Baking & Snack’s visit to Granny’s Kitchens, this line was wrapping portion-packed donuts, a popular food service item, at 315 individual pieces per minute. Peek rates for previous manual feeding methods seldom exceeded 200 units per minute. Electric eye sensors monitor the donut stream to feed each item into spaces between lugs on the wrapper’s in-feed conveyor.
Granny’s prefers to standardize on selected vendors and same model system when it comes to choosing equipment for production, packaging and freezing. This gives the bakery interchangeability on parts for vital systems and optimizes training efforts. The flexibility offered by this manufacturing approach helps Granny’s Kitchens serve its diverse customer base. “We do business in three basic areas - supermarkets and convenience stores, food service and retail grocery,” Mr. Rosenblum said. “Each requires its own sizes, packages, distribution patterns and formulations. The bakery is designed to allow us to focus its various asset resources on the immediate needs of our customers.”
Granny's Kitchens pursues a strategy of constant innovation when it comes to new products - customers expect it.
While treats such as new peach and raspberry flavors broaden cake styles, the most innovative in the yeast-raised line is a new donut croissant, introduced just this spring. Granny's employs croissant technology to produce the new style donut, the first of its kind to be made with true donut dough. It offers a coiled layer structure and light texture and is sold pre-fried, with optional glaze.
"In order to develop this whole line, everything has to be designed to work together - donut, icing, filling - to get through freeze/thaw properly," Mr. Rosenblum said.
Many new product ideas come from Granny's customers. Increasingly, requests are for more pre-finished and prepacked varieties. And responding to consumer trends, the bakery developed its reduced-fat donut holes. A special formulation cuts fat by 46%, resulting in just 1 g of fat per donut hole.
"Our company philosophy," Mr. Rosenblum said, "is to make a lot with a little. All our efforts and resources go into making donuts and only donuts and making them constantly better."
He summarized the Granny's Kitchens approach: "By cross-training our people, by developing effective communications and reporting systems, by operating computerized technology, we're able to be flexible to changeover on demand, to make what the market demands." That's true now and well beyond the year 2000.
Baking & Snack - May 1996
