How Are Biscuits Made in a Factory?
The production of biscuits in a factory include the steps of mixing, molding, baking and cooling. These are the four primary stages of biscuit production.
According to Eastman Industries, the first step involves feeding the ingredients – flour, sugar, fat and so on – into the mixers to prepare the dough. The mixing phase is usually done more than once with different speeds, but flour characteristics also play a role.
The next step requires the dough to be laminated and transferred to gauge rollers. It is in this stage that biscuits receive their shapes, either through cutting or molding.
The third stage has the biscuits baking inside of the oven where radiation, convection and conduction give the biscuits the correct color and volume. The biscuits are carried into the oven on a wire mesh band.
In the cooling stage, biscuits are placed onto 300- to 400-foot cooling conveyors to cool at room temperature. According to Khong Guan, natural cooling is preferred over forced cooling in order to maintain the texture quality of the biscuits.
The biscuits are then fed into packaging machines to be inserted into slug packs, pouch packs or family packs to be shipped to retailers. Industry and regulatory standards require that quality control checks be performed at every step of production.