America’s appetite for cookies continues to grow with a proliferation of baked and refrigerated dough choices in the grocery aisle. Plus, cookies abound in a growing number of restaurants, foodservice establishments, malls, retail chains, convenience stores and online sites. Production of private-label cookies in the U.S. now tops more than $1B per year. Rapid chilling and temperature control during dough processing is critical for enhanced product quality as bakeries scale up, develop new cookie sensations or expand into new markets. To meet these needs, in-line cryogenic chilling and freezing processes, which use either liquid carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) or liquid nitrogen (N 2 ), can offer significant advantages in increased production throughput, space and lower operating costs over other chilling or freezing methods. They can play an important role whether doughs are sliced and formed at the factory, baked and packaged for sale, sold as refrigerated raw dough or fully frozen for shipment. Pre-Chilling Dry Ingredients Even before cookie dough is mixed, cryogenic technology can help boost process quality by chilling flour, sugar or other dry ingredients as they are conveyed from silo to mixer. Ingredient temperatures inside silos can vary widely — not just during the warm summer months, but daily — especially for silos exposed to direct sunlight. State-of-the-art dry ingredient chilling systems can achieve a consistent flour temperature within +/- 1ºF of the desired setpoint at the mixer using a controlled injection of liquid CO 2 into the transfer line. This level of control dramatically improves mixer repeatability, especially when compared to the variability associated with traditional water ice or alternative CO 2 chilling methods. Cryogenic-injection chilling systems are frequently incorporated when installing pneumatic conveyor systems, or can be retrofitted to existing transfer lines. In addition to cryogenic chilling systems, in-line cryogenic freezers can improve […]