TOUR STOP #4: Baking and Cooling
Mmm, Mmm, Good!
Hundreds and thousands of cookies travel along conveyors as they pass through 300 foot ovens. If you look through the oven window, you can see the dough pieces as they bake. The sweet aroma of delicious, fresh-baked goodies fills the air. But it's really hot in this part of the bakery! Once you reach the end of the oven things cool off. The cookies wind around on conveyors for about twice the length of the oven while they gradually cool down. Some cookies go through cooling tunnels to help them "set up" before they are packaged (mostly chocolate covered varieties).
 Baking is so critical to the final results that a commercial bakery often is described in terms of how many ovens it has. A commercial oven is a tunnel that can be as long as a football field! It is made up of several sections, each with its own temperature controls. Cookies move through the various sections on an adjustable speed conveyor belt. Exposing the dough to the oven's high heat causes many physical and chemical changes. After baking, the cookies must be cooled under controlled conditions in order to retain appearance and flavor and to avoid condensation when packaged.
|
