Utilizing humidity loggers from Reading Thermal in industrial ovens, proofers, dryers, and cooling tunnels provides customers with the vital information they need to understand and improve the processes that affect their baked goods.
Reading Thermal, a Reading Bakery Systems brand headquartered in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania, has measured the commercial baking process for more than 25 years. We manufacture and support the SCORPION® 2 Profiling System which has become a standard in the baking industry. Use it to monitor actual in-process conditions and get the critical information you need to correct problems and maintain optimum process control.
Importance of Humidity Profiling
Products passing through a thermal process interact with the amount of moisture in the environment. Much of this moisture comes from the products themselves and represents a delicate balance that can affect finished products in many ways. For example:
- High oven humidity can increase the volume of your baked goods, lighten their crust color, soften crisp crusts, and make crackers lose their crunch.
- Too little moisture can cause goods that should be soft and moist to overbake and become tough or dry, affect the shelf life of baked pretzels, and affect product breakage during the packaging process.
Scorpion® 2 Digital Humidity Sensor
The new SCORPION® 2 Digital Humidity Sensor logs the absolute moisture content of the thermal environment in both heating and cooling processes. The sensor travels through the oven with your product, yielding a precise profile of moisture experienced by the product.
This new Digital Humidity Sensor has a breakthrough design that provides a better way to measure humidity in your oven, proofer, dryer and cooling tunnel.
Different types of pluggable sensors are available, including one created for solid or tight mesh conveyors and one for open mesh conveyors.
It contains a proprietary humidity sampling system with patent pending Anti-Saturation Technology™ that allows measurements in high temperature and very high dew point processes. The sampling system contains patent pending Anti-Saturation Technology™, allowing measurements in very high dew point environments, such as steam injection.
Our Digital Humidity Sensor is compatible with direct gas fired (DGF) ovens. Unlike oxygen sensor technology, which can be off by as much as 25% as a result of combustion gases in DGF ovens, the accuracy of this Digital Humidity Sensor remains the same regardless of the oven platform.
Long bake times and the need to produce the Bake Cycle S-Curve have also led Reading Thermal to design solutions just for the bread and bun baker, including our Pan+Dough Probe™. This dual probe unit is placed under the bread or bun dough and simultaneously captures the pan/dough interface temperature and the dough core temperature.
A copper plate is placed into the pan and remains fixed at the same single point during its entire passage through the oven. The Probe provides accurate repeatable results that cannot be achieved with hand-placed thermocouples.
Get in touch with Reading Thermal to learn more about our industrial oven humidity data logger and other innovative products. Contact us online, or call our headquarters in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania at (610) 678-5890 Ext. 2.