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Dough processing

SPECIALIST IN DOUGH MECHANISATION

Machines for dough mechanisation such as dough dividers, bread moulders or automatic proofers have been designed to bring time savings, comfort and productivity to bakers. MERAND as a manufacturer of bakery equipment has specialised since the 1950s solely in the design and manufacture of dough mechanisation machines.

BETWEEN KNEADING AND PROOFING

In the MERAND range you will not find flour silos, water coolers, kneading machines, mixers, proofing chambers or even freezers or baking ovens. You won't find a deck oven or a rotary oven either. We have chosen to focus on the bakery machinery between the kneading and proofing stages. This does not mean that we are not familiar with the various stages of bread-making, including baking, even though this type of bakery equipment is not in our field.

We considered that we had more to offer to artisan bakers or industrial bakeries by concentrating our research and development and our innovations on the stages of dough division, resting and dough piece moulding.

This is why you will find in the MERAND range of bakery machines, only hydraulic dividers, dough rounders, dough intermediate proofers, divider-rounders. Although we have become specialists in the mechanisation of dough, we have a very important range of bakery equipment. Indeed, we have developed automatic bread-making groups and automatic lines for baguettes, rolls, but also sandwich loaves, buns, country balls, etc.

Division

The division of the dough allows you to obtain dough pieces of the desired weight. In order to preserve the dough honeycomb structure, it is important to choose a solution that limits excessive degassing.
MERAND offers several solutions for dividing your dough :

- Hydraulic dividers and divider-shapers
- Volumetric dividers
- Automatic dividers
- Divider-rounders

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détente des pâtons dans la chambre de repos de boulangerie

Resting

This operation consists in letting the dough rest between dividing and shaping. The relaxation will favour the elongation in the shaper without the need to stress the dough too much during the rolling and elongation in the machine. The dough will retain all its properties even better.
The resting time is variable. It depends on the products to be baked, the nature of the dough, the type of production (fresh/frozen, etc.), the ambient temperature, the shape of the dough pieces after division, etc.
Semi-automatic resting proofers offer the same advantages as manual proofer. The difference is that the dough is automatically fed into the shaping machine after the resting process.
The automatic resting chambers offer even greater productivity as they are connected to automatic dividing and weighing machines.

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Moulding

The shaping takes place in 3 distinct stages, all of which are very important:

A nice curly shape (so that the flat shape curls up well) thanks to a heavy belt or a chainmail belt.
Final elongation to get the elongation, laminations and the desired aspect of the baguette or breads.
The final stretching to obtain the desired length and appearance of the baguette or bread.

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Rounding

The rounding process allows the restructuring of the dough's glutinous network and the increase the strength of the dough pieces. Depending on the characteristics of the dough, the dough pieces are tightened more or less strongly.

Pre-rolling is mainly done with 3 types of machines :

Pre-rounding tiles
Belt rounding machines
Conical rounding machines

Pelleting after stress relief is mainly done with 2 types of machines:

Conical rounding machines
Eccentric rounding machines

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Scoring

Scarification consists of automatically cutting the dough pieces with a blade called a "grigne". This operation takes place after fermentation, just before loading the dough into the oven. The grigne is a very important stage as it directly influences the appearance of the bread, its presentation...

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transfert des pâtons sur tapis convoyeur

Transfer

A conveyor is a machine that allows the transport of a dough piece in a continuons way on a predetermined path. Its function is to be able to automatically deposit the dough pieces from one machine to another without the need of an operator.

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