With a humidity data logger from Reading Thermal for commercial ovens, you can analyze and improve the processes that affect your products.
Reading Thermal, located in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania, has studied the commercial baking process for nearly 30 years. We manufacture the SCORPION® 2 Profiling System and Data Logger, a standard in the baking industry that also provides an easy way to validate your kill step for food safety.
By connecting our different Smart Sensors and sensor arrays to the SCORPION® 2 Profiling System and passing them through the oven along with your product, the system can capture the four primary baking parameters: 1) humidity, 2) temperature [air, band, and product core], 3) airflow [velocity], and 4) energy transfer [heat flux].
The Data Logger is the “brain” of our profiling system. It captures and stores profile data from the Smart Sensors that can be downloaded to a PC for analysis. It can capture data from up to 32 sensor/input channels as fast as 10 times per second.
Why Measure Humidity?
Humidity refers to the amount of water vapor in the air. As your products bake, they use the moisture available inside the oven. Without this water vapor, the quality and texture of your products will not turn out as you anticipated.
For example:
- High humidity inside the oven can lighten the crust color of baked goods and prevent them from burning.
- High humidity inside the oven can increase product volume by keeping the moisture locked inside instead of evaporating.
- Lower humidity usually results in crustier bread.
- Reducing evaporation keeps cookie surfaces moist, allowing them to stretch and preventing cracks.
- Humid air transfers heat to products more efficiently and cooks them faster.
- After baking, the amount of moisture left in a pretzel affects its shelf life.
- Some products must maintain surface condensation to produce a concentrated sugar solution that glazes the surface.
- The amount of moisture in your finished product can directly affect breakage during packaging.
Our Digital Humidity Sensor provides an even better way to measure humidity in your oven, proofer, dryer- and cooling tunnel. Its breakthrough design offers a more accurate and reliable way of measuring the total moisture content of the thermal environment. The sensor uses a proprietary humidity sampling system with patent-pending Anti-Saturation Technology™ that allows measurements in high temperature and very high dew point processes.
Mechanically, the humidity sensor has a high-temperature moisture sensor, a low-temperature moisture sensor, and a bulk air or dry bulb temperature sensor. The humidity sensor documents the relationship between oven moisture and finished product moisture in ovens. In Cooling Tunnels, it can monitor dew point temperature to prevent condensation on the product surface.
Contact Reading Thermal online, or call our headquarters in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania, at (610) 678-5890 Ext. 2 to learn more about our innovative humidity data logger for ovens.