Baguette production lines face a unique set of challenges, from managing sticky, high-hydration doughs to achieving uniform shaping, proofing, and crust quality. Exact Mixing’s advanced continuous mixing systems are designed to overcome these challenges, ensuring consistent dough performance, enhanced operational efficiency, and better end products.
Materials Handling
In traditional production lines, bulk materials handling can introduce inconsistencies that directly affect dough hydration, fermentation, and final product quality. Slight variations in flour, water, or minor ingredient delivery can lead to uneven crumb structure, poor oven spring, or irregular crusts.
Exact Mixing’s integrated bulk materials handling systems address these issues by automating ingredient delivery and blending before they reach the mixer. Pneumatic transfer for dry materials, automated liquid supply tanks, and pre-blending of minor and micro ingredients ensure every recipe is supplied to the mixer with accuracy and uniformity.
By stabilizing the flow of both dry and liquid inputs, Exact Mixing ensures baguette dough begins with the correct ratios and distribution of ingredients, eliminating one of the biggest sources of inconsistency in large-scale production.
Ingredients Metering & Dough Hydration
Baguette doughs typically have high hydration levels (65–75%), which makes them sticky and difficult to process. If not mixed and developed correctly:
- The dough can tear during dividing and moulding.
- Gas retention is compromised, leading to dense loaves.
- Stickiness can cause stoppages or cleaning delays in equipment.
Exact Mixing solves these challenges by combining continuous mixing with precise ingredient metering. Our systems use gravimetric Loss-in-Weight feeders for dry materials and closed-loop controls for liquids, ensuring recipe accuracy at every step. This level of precision creates uniform hydration from the start, producing dough that is smooth, cohesive, and easy to handle.
Consistent Dough Mixing
Consistency is the foundation of successful baguette production, yet batch mixing often creates variations in dough temperature, gluten development, and hydration. These inconsistencies lead to irregular shaping, unpredictable fermentation, and uneven baking results.
Exact Mixing’s continuous systems overcome these challenges by delivering a steady stream of dough with uniform hydration, temperature, and structure. The dough exits the mixer with ideal rheology and strength, enabling dividers and moulders to form long, slender baguettes without tearing or collapsing. This reliability ensures predictable proofing, clean scoring, strong oven spring, and even crust coloration, producing baguettes with consistent quality, appearance, and flavor every time.
Crust Quality and Shelf Life
Baguettes are known for their crisp crust and short shelf life. Challenges include:
- Crust softening during cooling or packaging.
- Moisture migration that reduces crispness.
- Limited freshness window, making distribution more difficult compared to other breads.
With Hydrobond Technology, which pre-hydrates dry ingredients before they enter the mixer, dough develops with less heat and more efficiency. This reduces over-oxidation, helping preserve flavor, aroma, and crust crispness. By controlling water absorption more precisely, bakeries can extend their products’ shelf life.
Maintenance and Sanitation
Sticky dough can build up on dividing and moulding equipment, increasing downtime and wear on moving parts, especially blades and moulding belts. The clamshell configurations of Exact Mixing systems make them easy to sanitize, maintain, clean, and inspect. Quick-disconnect, sanitary connections allow for fast cleaning of liquid ingredient lines, and all mixing components can be washed down in place, streamlining sanitation and reducing downtime.
The Best Baguettes Start Here
From dough handling and proofing to scoring, baking, and sanitation, Exact Mixing systems address every challenge facing baguette production lines. By delivering consistent hydration, stable dough structure, and easier cleaning and maintenance, our mixers allow your bakery to produce baguettes with the quality and efficiency your customers expect. Contact us to get started today.
