Suzanne Callander poses some questions to a variety of industry experts to shine a spotlight on some of today’s dough handling challenges and solutions.
Q: What dough handling challenges do bakery manufacturers face today and how can technology help overcome them?
Ronald Hoiting, Marketing & Communications at Rademaker: Dough is a highly sensitive material, its texture, stickiness, and elasticity can change quickly depending on temperature, hydration, and ingredient variations. This makes consistent handling a complex task, especially as bakeries scale up production and diversify their product portfolios.
One of the biggest challenges is maintaining dough consistency across batches. Variations in raw materials or environmental conditions can lead to differences in dough behaviour, which can affect product quality. The use of technologies such as sensor-based monitoring systems and adaptive process control can help detect and correct deviations in real time, ensuring greater stability. Another common issue is stickiness – particularly in clean-label or high-hydration doughs. Here, the use of non-stick coatings and advanced surface treatments on rollers and conveyors can help reduce downtime and waste caused by adhesion.
Temperature management is also important because dough properties can change with even small changes in temperature. Integrated cooling systems, combined with smart controls, can help maintain optimal dough temperature throughout production.
Finally, quality consistency and hygiene remain key focus areas when it comes to dough handling and here automated inspection systems and hygienic machine design can help reduce contamination risk and cleaning time. The use of modern dough handling technology is enabling bakers to achieve greater precision, repeatability and efficiency, turning traditionally manual and experience-driven processes into data-controlled, automated systems that can help preserve dough integrity and ensure high-quality results at industrial scale.
Terry Bartsch, Executive Product Manager at AMF Fusion: Today’s bakery manufacturers face a range of challenges starting with ever more complex recipes. Gluten-free, high-protein, low-sugar, or allergen-free doughs require precise mixing, consistent hydration and careful handling to maintain texture and quality. High production volumes and fast-paced lines increase the risk of operator errors, dough inconsistencies, and product loss. Additionally, labour shortages and high staff turnover requires equipment that is easy to operate and capable of maintaining consistent output, regardless of operator experience.
Modern technology can help ensure uniform mixing, precise portioning, and smooth transfer across the production line. By automating repetitive tasks and integrating upstream and downstream equipment, bakeries can improve efficiency, reduce waste, and maintain high-quality products.
Michael Gier, Manager of World of Bakery at Fritsch: The trend towards bread made from soft doughs, with pre-proofing times of up to 24 hours and often a high rye content, poses production challenges. Producing a growing number of product varieties while maintaining at consistently high quality, production lines need to be easy to retool and to clean and must be ready to expand if necessary.
Processing soft doughs often requires the use of greater amounts of separating agents, to make the dough sheet as true to weight and shape as possible. However, this can have a negative impact on the final product and can also increase cleaning times. Handling dough the right way is not always an easy task, which is why Fritsch aims to handle products as gently as possible, to maintain sensitive structures.
Depending on the customers’ requirements, in terms of performance and the degree of automation, Fritsch can offer two solutions to process soft doughs. With a capacity of up to 1.8 tons of dough per hour, the compact PROGRESSA bread line allows mid-sized retail bakers to produce a variety of products with precision in weight – ensured by a guillotine with two weighing units. Meanwhile, the modular IMPRESSA bread industrial line offers high output and gentle dough handling from the beginning to the end of the process.
Sam Pallottini Director, Cookie, Cracker & Pet Food Sales at Reading Bakery Systems: Today, labour costs or access to labour is one of the biggest challenge facing bakeries. This has led more businesses to look for ways to automate their systems – from mixing through packaging. This, in turn, requires products to be consistently the same. Exact Mixing’s Continuous Mixing technology can offer a solution here – it is an automated mixing system designed to provide dough when it is required and to stop when it is no, ensuring a consistent stream of dough to the line. In bakery production everything starts at the mixer and good dough makes the whole system run more efficiently.
Fabrice Bourion, Product Manager at Mecatherm: As consumer demand shifts toward more diverse, premium and artisan-style breads, industrial bakers need to adapt their processes to enable them to deliver the product variety and quality that is being demanded. At the same time, they must continuously optimise performance and address the growing challenge of sustainability to ensure long-term growth.
It is important that bakeries focus on preserving dough quality – by respecting and enhancing its characteristics throughout the handling process to ensure the delivery of unique products while avoiding stretching, tearing, or excessive compression during the production process.
Maintaining product regularity is another key challenge. When it comes to working with highly hydrated and rested dough, products can be difficult to divide and shape due to their stickiness which can make it more challenging to achieve a consistent weight and shape for each piece. Ensuring product regularity is also essential to avoid unnecessary product losses, to reduce waste and to optimise production processes.
Q: What do you see as most interesting technology advances that can help overcome today’s dough handling challenges?
Ronald: I believe that one of the most exciting developments in dough handling today is the integration of digital intelligence and sensor technology into traditional mechanical processes. As bakeries face increasing challenges with dough consistency, temperature control, and product variability, technology is shifting from automation alone toward smart, data-driven production.
This has led Rademaker to combine mechanical precision with intelligent control systems. Features such as sensor-controlled dough thickness helps ensure consistent sheeting quality and allows automatic adjustments in real time, reducing manual intervention and variability. The company’s partnership with computer vision expert, Sensure takes this a step further, integrating advanced vision and AI-based inspection systems that can monitor product shape, size, and structure during production. This integration provides valuable insights from the inspection data, enabling operators to make informed adjustments to the production line – either during the current run or in preparation for the next – to optimise consistency and product quality.
Another significant step forward is the use of robotics for handling delicate dough pieces and repetitive tasks. When combined with vision technology, robots are able to adjust movements dynamically, improving precision while maintaining gentle handling to protect dough structure. These advances align with the industry’s growing focus on flexibility, consistency, and reduced waste.
Finally, enhanced temperature and process control systems ensure that dough remains within its ideal processing window, even in high-capacity environments. The integration of data collection, data analysis, and mechanical expertise, offers bakeries full visibility and control over every stage of dough processing.
Terry: The AMF Dough Guardian Plus, which is a dough monitoring and control system, can help optimise mixing. It is able to track energy consumption and provide historic curves and data for real-time monitoring.
A camera mounted on the mixer canopy also allows operators to see the consistency and behaviour of the dough while in the mixer, in real time. Combined with instant feedback when errors occur during ingredient loading, this solution enables operators to correct issues quickly, helping to ensure consistent dough quality and reducing product waste.
Michael: We believe that bakeries need a high degree of transparency to allow them to increase production efficiency. Our Smart Production Insights (SPI) tool gives production and shift managers real-time insights into the most important performance data of the line via a clear dashboard. Even downtimes caused by minor malfunctions are clearly recorded. By continuously collecting data and visualising key performance indicators in real time, significant improvements in overall line efficiency can be achieved.
Our Watchdog tool monitors all of the drives on the line – measuring and continuously analysing the motor current and temperature of each drive. As soon as the value calculated by algorithms reaches a specified deviation from the defined target value, a warning is sent to a defined group of operators, who can react accordingly before the drive unit becomes damaged or even destroyed.
Sam: Traditional dough mixing systems usually take a large batch of dough and break it down into smaller pieces for transportation to the hopper of the forming machine. The dough typically starts out on the wetter side and gradually dries to an optimal performance before it then becomes too dry. We can offer a solution called Continuous Mixing which instead provides a stream of optimally moist dough to the forming machines when required. Unlike batch systems, if the line stops it is not necessary to discard any dough.
Continuous mixing can also simplify the dough feed system to the forming equipment. Batch systems typically require large troughs, trough dumpers and laytime conveyors to hold batches from the mixer. Conversely, continuous mixing provides a continuous stream of dough which eliminates the need for this equipment. Furthermore, it can provide dough in chunks, kibbled and streams to feed directly into the hopper and there are lower labour requirements for the line, which can help overcome labour shortages.
Fabrice: To meet the challenge of producing premium crusty breads without compromising production efficiency, Mecatherm has developed new dividing and moulding technologies designed for highly hydrated doughs. The M-NS II divider, for example, preserves dough quality through smooth handling without stretching, providing a gentle mechanical action on the dough to divide it into pieces without tearing it.
Combined with the divider, the M-RT moulder is well adapted for highly hydrated and rested doughs. It also supports the production of products with regular weights and shapes and enables bakers to achieve a thin, shiny crust and enhanced aromas thanks to its moulding technology, which keeps the dough pieces in constant motion during production and avoids excessive flouring – reproducing the traditional hand movements of the baker.
To answer production efficiency challenges and avoid product waste, the moulder incorporates an isothermal enclosure for the intermediate proofer. Within this insulated chamber the temperature can be controlled to prevent products from drying out and sticking.
The moulder integrates numerous solutions to optimise production and reduce product losses. Sensors are positioned at different stages of the moulding process. The EYE-Q quality control system, powered by AI and developed by ABI, is also used to monitor product depositing.
This solution can be deployed at any stage of the production line – including the dough handling step – to detect non-conforming products. By analysing production trends and deviations, it helps operators to make adjustments when irregularities are detected by providing instant alerts with suggested corrective actions. It also conducts trend analyses over medium to long periods, giving industrial bakeries a precise view of their production lines and deeper insights to help address efficiency challenges.
Meanwhile, the divider employs an adaptive weight regulation system, based on the real density of the dough. Dough pieces are automatically ejected if their weight does not match the target and any pieces that do not meet the weight requirements can be reused at the mixing stage.
Åsa ericsson, Marketing Manager at Sveba Dahlen: We believe that there are some big advantages in automating dough handling processes. Automated workflows – from mixing to dividing and moulding – reduce manual handling, save time, and minimise the risk of human error. In practice, this allows bakeries to produce larger volumes without compromising quality.
Looking ahead, we believe that digitalisation and intelligent control systems will continue to shape how bakeries manage their dough processes. By optimising existing workflows, bakeries can enhance both product quality and production efficiency.
Glimek dough handling equipment can provide customised baking solutions commercial dough handling equipment systems and complete bread lines. our goal is to support customers with knowledge and solutions to address their daily challenges. By combining technology, experience, and smart processes, bakeries can handle the complexity of dough management in an efficient and sustainable way.
