With 15 years of experience in the market, Royal Kaak has over 50 DrieM sheeting lines in operation worldwide. The company of Dutch origin, with operating companies and sales and service offices worldwide, focuses on continuously innovating to improve the sheeting process, so that craftsmanship and technology go hand in hand, while making the process easier for the operator.
Kaak has brought several new developments to its DrieM sheeting line. It now comes with a new generation of rounders, for instance. Not long ago, it received an Easy Access Portioner, a new system that lowers the portioner on a frame within comfortable reach, for cleaning and maintenance without having to dismantle it. The line also features a new seeding system, which allows adding seeds to the bottom of the dough – opening the door to an array of new products that are fully covered in different kinds of seeds.
Kaak’s approach to designing the technology is perfecting the required processing steps to the desired end product, for maximum efficiency and reliability in semi-industrial and industrial operations. Rens van Heesch, Product Sales Manager DrieM Sheeting Lines at Royal Kaak, shares: “Because we supply production lines worldwide, we gain a wealth of knowledge and insights. Together with our R&D department, we can effectively and quickly translate market demands into optimized production processes.”
Sheeting bread and pizza dough
The DrieM sheeting line is the first specifically developed by Kaak to process bread and pizza doughs. It is a timely solution that can meet the growing trend toward softer, more hydrated doughs – qualities that are well-liked, but also known to pose challenges during processing.
The DrieM sheeting lines can process an extensive range of doughs with widely different characteristics, dough starting at around 45% hydration and allowing processes with and without bulk fermentation. “Because bakers have their own philosophies, recipes, and core values, no two sheeting lines are alike. To optimize processing, our technology now distinguishes between soft dough and, where applicable, bulk fermented doughs or doughs more than 60% hydration, or green doughs with a hydration level lower than 65%,” Rens van Heesch explains.
The key to accommodating bread and pizza doughs is to keep the dough horizontally on the sheeting line,” says Rens van Heesch, noting that, “A hopper with a specific design is required to ensure very precise dough chunking.” Moreover, Kaak opted for a servo-driven chunker for its soft dough sheeter, to allow more flexibility with the incorporated chunker knives. The most beneficial solution is determined on a case-by-case basis, following testing, which is usually carried out at the Kaak Technology Center (KTC) in Nieuwkuijk, the Netherlands. Products including baguettes, pizza and tin bread can be tested through product trials and simulations at the KTC, together with on-site specialists and master bakers, who can provide asistance.
“The dough and the desired end product
determine the process; the process determines the technique – that is our vision.”
Rens van Heesch,
Product Sales Manager DrieM Sheeting Lines, Royal Kaak
Smart sheeting
Data is, perhaps, one of the most powerful tools in a bakery at present. Kaak has been developing solutions for data collection, analysis and management to meet this surging need for information and optimum application guides. The iBakeCare® platform collects the data and converts it all into an online dashboard for monitoring the production process, analyzing efficiency, and predicting maintenance needs, Rens van Heesch points out.
He anticipates this trend will only grow in importance, thanks to the invaluable operational benefits it offers bakers: “We see that the advent of AI in our world and in the business world is accelerating data analysis. At Kaak, we have been responding to this trend across a wide range of areas for quite some time.” The company incorporates several additional sensors into the DrieM sheeting line, to generate the necessary data for these insights.
Automated processing
The DrieM sheeting line automatically adjusts settings via cascade based on the feedback of the line. The dough technology expert explains how this is consistently achieved: “Our weighing system collects weight results and, in combination with several sensors that check the dough sheet on the line, a proper dough management is provided, based on a set recipe by the Kaak Master Baker during commissioning. Royal Kaak configures required products in the software during the wet commissioning phase, but the line is not limited to them. New ones can always be added, with assistance from the company’s Master Bakers, if needed.
In fact, the entire sheeting process has been completely automated. Once installed, the DrieM sheeting system can be operated by a single person. They will only need to carry out visual checks to verify that the dough is automatically fed correctly and that the dough is behaving within expected parameters. If, at any point in the process, the smart sensors measure characteristics outside of the preset values, iBakeCare® will help explain the reasons behind deviations. Royal Kaak can also share important feedback with the bakers based on the analyzed data. “This helps stabilize the process and increase the uptime of the line, lowering the Total Cost of Ownership,” Rens van Heesch concludes. As always, throughout the sheeting process, the core priority is to ensure the structure of the dough remains intact, regardless of how wide and thin the dough sheet needs to become, according to the needs of the final product. For this, modular sheeting sections are essential, to configure the line according to what the dough needs. “When processing a thin dough sheet for higher hydrated pizza, for example, Kaak adds an extra dough cross controller to gently reach the final width and thickness, while maintaining the developed gluten structure of the dough,” the expert illustrates. The soft dough sheeting line is always equipped with two multi-rollers, which do the majority of the gentle dough reduction. With the DrieM sheeting lines, dough sheets can be made ranging from 450 mm to 1,400 mm in width. “The minimum mechanical opening between the gauging station is 1 mm, giving the minimum final dough sheet thickness,” he points out.
A new generation of rounders
The dough rounder was recently reenvisioned, with a new design aiming at increasing process efficiency, ease of use and low maintenance requirements with new features
incorporated into the rounding technique. By adjusting various parameters via the recipe-driven software on the HMI, the unique rounding mechanism ensures the rounding of both soft and pre-fermented doughs as well as green doughs.
In the redesign, the number of maintenance-sensitive components has been reduced, Kaak details. This ensures improved accessibility to the operating side and, in particular, significantly enhanced access to the maintenance side. This has been achieved without compromising capacity; dough pieces weighing between 50 g and 830 g can be rounded, with volumes reaching up to a maximum of 4,500 kg of dough per hour, depending on the product.
Special products, with more seeds
Looking at consumer preferences and trends for unique, exciting product offerings, Kaak incorporated an bottom decoration system, which, as its name indicates, is able to apply seeds to the bottom of the dough pieces. It works for cut, molded and rounded dough products and can be used to create luxury bread specialties, decorated on top, bottom, or completely enrobed.
Anything from poppy seeds, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds to pumpkin seeds, by themselves or in different mixes, the DrieM sheeting line offers the flexibility to combine any of these options with the new decorating system.
Hygiene is a priority
Moreover, the Easy Access Portioner ensures these delicate doughs are safely processed, as the machine can be easily and thoroughly cleaned and maintained. It is simply automatically lowered beside the line, an efficient and convenient method to improve the line’s hygiene.
Developing improvements is a continuous effort at Kaak, researching how different new technologies and concepts can present opportunities for bakery line upgrades. Currently, metal 3D printing technologies are being developed and integrated in different kind of purposes to Royal Kaak production lines.
For Kaak, it is the dough and the desired end product that determine the process: “The process determines the technique; that is our vision,” the specialist underlines. Depending on the configuration, a wide range of products can be made flexibly, from cut, omega-cut, and rounded to molded dough pieces.