Reading Bakery Systems manufactures continuous mixing and other commercial bakery equipment. Discover the benefits of batch vs. continuous mixing and how continuous mixing can help you produce a better-quality finished product.
Headquartered in Robesonia, PA, Reading Bakery Systems serves snack food manufacturers all over the globe. We offer a comprehensive line of mixing, dough handling and forming, baking, drying, and supplemental equipment, cracker systems, biscuit systems, bread snack systems, potato snack systems, pretzel systems, and control systems.
Our primary mixer brand – Exact Mixing – is the global leader in continuous mixing technology and has made us a leader in the snack food industry. The innovative technology provides customers with consistent dispersion of ingredients, simpler dough feed equipment, and tighter control over the entire mixing process.
How Batch Mixing and Continuous Mixing Compare
- Bulk delivery of materials: The systems used to deliver bulk materials to the mixer are the same for batch and continuous mixing. They are typically brought from a source such as a silo or super sack unloader to the mixing receiver by pneumatic transfer. In the continuous mixing process, ingredients can also be added by hand with a ribbon blender. The key difference is that the addition of raw materials to a continuous mixer is more accurate than with a batch mixer in nearly every case.
- Measuring of materials into the mixer: Extra weighing equipment and controls are often required to get the right-sized batch of ingredients to the batch mixer. With a continuous mixer, all metering is done directly at the mixer, leading to greater automation, more accuracy, and a significant cost savings in the long term.
- Mixing: Studies indicate that continuous mixing eliminates dough variations associated with batch cycles and produces a consistent product all day, every day. At the lowest production rates (500 to 1500 pounds per hour), batch mixing is slightly less expensive than continuous mixing. At higher rates, continuous mixing is less expensive, and the savings improve as production rates increase.
- Dough leaves mixer in usable size loaves: Batch mixers create large “batches” of dough, and manufacturers need extra equipment to resize them. This often causes time delays and unnecessary exposure to the environment where contamination may occur. Continuous mixers produce a constant stream of dough that can be sliced automatically into loaves by the mixer.
Models include the Exact EX Continuous Mixer, which is ideal for crackers, pretzels, sweet goods, pizza, pet treats, and other wheat-based products, and the Exact HDX Continuous Mixer, which is designed for bread, rolls, buns, English muffins and similar products, and can manufacture highly developed dough at low temperatures.
A complete Exact Mixing Continuous Mixing System includes the mixer, blender, materials handling and ingredients metering systems, and the control system that monitors and distributes product between them. RBS provides complete systems, testing, and installation supervision for both straight dough and liquid ferment systems.
To learn more about batch vs. continuous mixing and how Reading Bakery Systems can help improve your mixing process, please call us at (01) 610-693-5816 or contact us today.