Monitoring Oven Temperature Uniformity

Monitoring the uniformity of your oven temperature enables you achieve maximum food safety compliance and control changes in the fermentation and humidity levels of your products, as well as their color, texture and taste, The SCORPION® 2 Data Logger from Reading Thermal will help you bake with confidence.

Reading Thermal has focused on measuring and understanding 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.

The SCORPION® 2 enables you to monitor actual in-process conditions and get the critical information you need to correct problems and maintain optimum process control.  This powerful diagnostic tool has become an industry standard for understanding and improving your proofing, baking, cooling and freezing processes.

Why Measure Oven Temperature?

When you produce bread, artisan bread, rolls, biscuits, hamburger buns, cakes, or other bread products, you recognize that several stages in your process are temperature-dependent, such as oven-spring, drying/dehydration, and color formation. Too much heat coming from one direction in the oven, for example, can cause the bottoms of the loaves to burn before the crusts are properly browned.

The Reading Thermal SCORPION® 2 Temperature Sensor Array is designed to measure temperature at product level, in fixed positions across the conveyor, and delivers a true representation of what your product is experiencing over time. Different types of pluggable sensors are available, including one designed for solid or tight mesh conveyors and one for open mesh conveyors.

The sensor array is connected to the SCORPION® 2 Profiling System and then travels through the oven with the product, yielding a precise picture of temperature from side-to-side and end-to-end.

Product-core-temperature measurements can also be made simultaneously by utilizing the product probe inputs on the sensor array.  This can be the difference between excellent quality and an under-baked or burnt product.

Case Studies:

  • A Kaiser-roll bakery was running products through its tunnel oven for 16 minutes. The SCORPION® 2 Profiling System and Temperature Sensor determined that the products had already reached an internal temperature of 200°F after 10 minutes of baking time. This enabled the bakery to shorten baking time and significantly increase capacity.
  • Reading Thermal was able to assist a large bakery client that needed to determine the proper baking time for a wheat sandwich line it was baking in an 84-ft. continuous impingement tunnel oven with eight zones. By using the SCORPION® 2 Profiling System, internal dough temperatures were measured at 200°F at 74% of the 19:30 baking cycle rather than at the target rate of 85%. To slow internal baking, overall oven temperatures were reduced an average of 15°F, resulting in thousands of dollars of savings per month on natural gas.

Monitoring oven temperature uniformity is a crucial step in controlling food quality and safety. Contact Reading Thermal online, or call our headquarters in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania at (610) 678-5890 Ext. 2 to learn more about our innovative products.