Oven Temperature Profiling

If you are seeking the best equipment for industrial oven temperature profiling, look no further than the state-of-the-art SCORPION® 2 Profiling System from Reading Thermal.

Headquartered in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania, Reading Thermal has been studying, measuring, and understanding the commercial baking process for nearly 30 years. We manufacture and support the SCORPION® 2 Profiling System which has become a standard in the baking industry and is relied upon by customers around the globe.

Why Temperature Profiling is Important

The quality of your finished products will depend upon the performance of your oven. While you may know a lot about every other step in your manufacturing operation, do you know what is happening inside your oven?

The characteristics of baked goods are determined by the amount and type of heat applied to them during the baking process, and every oven bakes differently.

Temperature profiling provides you with reliable data that will help you optimize your process, prove process control, and make corrections when required.

The benefits include:

  • Better control over product quality
  • Better control over product consistency
  • Greater productivity
  • Reduction of energy consumption and costs
  • Improved process repeatability
  • Fast troubleshooting

How Temperature Affects Your Baked Goods

Product level temperature in an oven can make the difference between the best quality and output and wasteful, under-baked, or burnt product. The process of fermentation, product swelling, moisture evaporation, flavor development, and surface coloring are all time and temperature dependent. For example:

  • Too little heat can cause crusts to be brittle or dry,
  • Too little heat can create products that are too light in color.
  • Too little heat can create a structure that is too dense.
  • Excess heat can cause the bottoms of the loaves to burn before the crusts brown correctly.
  • Excess heat causes moisture to evaporate too rapidly and the dough to rise unevenly.

If you produce bread, artisan bread, buns, rolls. biscuits, cakes, or other bread products, you understand that several stages of the process are temperature-dependent, including oven-spring, drying/dehydration, and color formation.

The SCORPION® 2 Data Logger

The Reading Thermal SCORPION® 2 Temperature Sensor Array measures 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 Data Logger 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 via the product probe inputs on the sensor array.  This can be the difference between excellent quality and an under-baked or burnt product.

Our state-of-the-art profiling system also provides an easy way to validate your kill step for food safety and FSMA compliance. FSMA requires commercial bakeries to provide validation of process controls, or thermal kill steps, in an effort to reduce food borne pathogens, such as Salmonella spp, in ingredients and finished products.

As you evaluate the benefits of oven temperature profiling, look no further than the state-of-the-art Reading Thermal SCORPION® 2 Profiling System and our exceptional sensors and sensor arrays. Contact us online, or call (610) 678-5890 Ext. 2 to explore our line of innovative products.