Pizza is one of the most popular foods worldwide, and various plant constructors offer industrial pizza lines. Here is a small overview of the manufacturers and methods.
Pizza production in the Fritsch Technology Center (FTC), Kitzingen, Germany. A customer can try out a pizza line here, e.g. using their own raw materials
Pizza can be produced to a customer’s specification to comply with almost all personal preferences and dietary or religious restrictions. A pizza can also be adapted to a series of regional preferences. In addition there are variations of pizzas and pizza-like snacks. Industrial pizza line manufacturers offer a very wide variety of solutions and processes. Here is a small, albeit incomplete, overview of plant constructors and processes.
According to the manufacturer, FRITSCH pizza lines start with a dough sheeting line operating according to the FRITSCH SoftProcessing© method to carefully shape the dough into a dough sheet while retaining the structure of soft doughs. For this, the SoftProcessing© method uses a satellite head. The satellite head has eight rollers with a non-stick coating, and moves in the same direction as the dough sheet. Each of the eight rollers moves in the opposite direction to the dough sheet. After the dough has been reduced to the required dough sheet thickness, and depending on the process, the dough can go into the proofer, for example. To create a slightly irregular shape, a poking roller can be used to poke the dough after proofing, thus simulating manual make-up. A FRITSCH IMPRESSA pizza line can be used to produce Italian pizza, American pizza, calzones and flatbreads.
Generally speaking, there are two ways to produce pizza crusts, either from a doughball or by cutting out on a dough sheeting line.
FRITSCH specializes in dough make-up, while FRITSCH Bakery Systems also offers to plan entire pizza lines extending beyond the dough sheeter line. FRITSCH Bakery Systems acts as a single provider to plan the design concept and coordinate the suppliers of the ovens, freezers and packing plants to offer a turnkey solution for the whole pizza line.
The article is part of an extended feature on pizza production technology, published in Baking+Biscuit International, issue 3 – 2019.
