Unreliable or inaccurate temperature and humidity monitoring for commercial bakery ovens in South Africa can be disastrous. They often result in drier than normal bakes, which rarely announce themselves right away but can result in producing a lot of food you can’t confidently ship. Reading Thermal products can help you catch dryness trends early, before the waste starts.
Why Dryness Problems Hide Until It’s Too Late
Dryness is often a slow drift, not a sudden failure. A small change in oven humidity, exhaust behavior, makeup air or proofing conditions can push moisture loss a little higher. The product still bakes through, so nothing looks broken. But that extra moisture loss stacks up across the shift, and finished texture starts moving out of spec.
Another reason dryness hides is that setpoints can stay the same while the actual environment changes. You might run the same temperature settings and the same belt speed, yet the oven air can be drier than yesterday. If you’re not tracking humidity and temperature together, it’s easy to blame ingredients, operators, or mixing when the real issue is the bake environment drifting.
Watching Temperature and Humidity as a Pair
One of the most practical ways to catch drier than normal bakes is to monitor both temperature and humidity trends through the process. Reading Thermal offers temperature and humidity monitoring tools that help you see the conditions your product is actually experiencing, not just what the control panel says.
When you can view temperature and humidity side by side, patterns become obvious. You may notice that humidity drops after a changeover, during heavy door activity, or as the oven warms deeper into a long run. You may also see that the temperature curve stays steady while humidity drifts downward, which is a classic recipe for product drying out faster than expected.
Building a Baseline for a Normal Bake
Data is only useful if you know what normal looks like. Reading Thermal tools make it easier to create a baseline run, then compare future runs against it. That baseline becomes your reference point for what a good bake environment looks like on your line.
Once you have it, you can answer questions quickly. Did the oven air get drier today? Did the proofing area start lower than usual? Did cooling conditions pull extra moisture out after the oven? Instead of guessing, you can compare curves and see where the run started to separate from the baseline.
Catching Drift Early With Simple Trends
You do not need complicated math to spot a problem early. A steady downward humidity trend during the first part of the bake can warn you that crust will set faster and moisture will leave the product sooner. A slower humidity recovery after a stop can warn you that restart product may bake differently for a period of time.
Reading Thermal monitoring tools help you capture these trends in a way that is easy to review. When teams can see the shape of the run, they can act sooner. That might mean adjusting steam timing, checking exhaust settings, addressing makeup air changes, or simply pausing to confirm the oven is behaving as expected before a full shift run continues.
If you’re ready to benefit from top-of-the-line temperature and humidity monitoring for commercial bakery ovens in South Africa, turn to Reading Thermal. Learn more by contacting us online or calling 610-678-5890.