The Baking Academy at the IREKS headquarters in Kulmbach is a new space dedicated to sharing knowledge and working with bakeries. Markus Hombach, Director of the IREKS Baking Academy, explains the facility expansion and the opportunities it offers: “First and foremost, the expansion of our bakeries was necessary to create more capacity for the many events that take place in Kulmbach, such as customer seminars and field service training. Therefore, a new building with a total area of over 300 m² was added to the Baking Academy.

In addition to the three training bakeries, the Baking Academy includes two confectionery bakeries, a warm and a cold one. In the cold confectionery bakery, the focus is on processing whipped cream, creams and chocolate products, while in the warm confectionery bakery, they work with flour, and bake.

The Baking Academy was equipped with new machines and equipment, including a vacuum oven, a ‘stress-free’ dough-making facility, a modern dough divider and an annular tube oven – a less common system. “This gives us the opportunity to bake with ovens from different manufacturers so that we can compare baking results and train our employees on the different controls and special features. When the new equipment will be used in our seminars, our customers as well as the IREKS Field Service will benefit. We can use the latest technology and state-of-the-art machines, refrigeration systems and ovens in our workshops and design the baking programs to be even more flexible and practice-oriented.”

Image: Insight into the IREKS Baking Academy. Credit: IREKS