Baking & Snack - December 2014 - 36

VENUS WAFERS

ment of the dough and laminates it. The dough sheet is
then reduced and weighed every 15 minutes to ensure
the proper thickness is achieved. Too thin and the crackers will burn. Too thick and the crackers won't bake all
the way.
Once the dough has been rolled, reduced and laminated, the cracker shapes are cut by rotary cutters built
in-house. The line features three different cutters that
can be raised or lowered for a quick changeover that
takes just one minute. Just after the cutter and before
the oven, the conveyor can quickly be switched out for a
sprayer to make sprayed crackers.
After being cut, the crackers enter a Thomas L. Green
direct-fired 100-ft oven to be baked. After baking, the
products pass through Venus Wafers' latest addition -
a Radio Frequency Macrowave dryer that addressed a
challenge a customer had presented the bakery
A potential customer approached Venus Wafers to
produce a light-colored cracker. With only the plant's
oven, Mr. Pollara had been unable to achieve the proper
moisture level without over-coloring the product. He attended the International Baking Industry Expo in 2010
searching for some technology that would address this
challenge. He found Radio Frequency's Macrowave dryer. The Radio Frequency post-baking dryer eliminates
the final drying requirement from the conventional oven
and then heats and dries only the moist interior of the
product without adding color. This seemed like the answer to Venus Wafers' dilemma.
Bob Pollara (right), chief engineer of Venus Wafers, worked
with Tim Clark, president,
Radio Frequency, to get the
proper moisture content of a
customer's product without
over-coloring the cracker.

36 Baking & Snack December 2014 / www.bakingandsnack.com

However, Radio Frequency did not sell a dryer sized
for Venus Wafers' 26-in. wide oven band. Instead of providing Venus Wafers with a larger system that would be
too much for the throughput of a regional bakery, Radio
Frequency offered a smaller, pilot-line machine previously used for testing at the vendor's facility.
Since installation five years ago, the Macrowave dryer
has increased Venus Wafers' productivity 25% and enabled Mr. Pollara to produce a light-colored cracker
with a moisture level of 2%. The dryer can take cracker
moisture level as low as 1.3% without adding color to the
crackers.
"Not only is productivity up, but we also eliminated
some checking problems we had on a few of the different
products we produce," Mr. Pollara said. "It's been a great
addition. Productivity is right where we want it, so now
we can go out and make commitments to clients and
have confidence in our ability to produce."
Venus Wafers' success with the pilot-line sized system
prompted Radio Frequency to introduce the Bantam
Series dryers. These dryers feature a smaller, air-cooled
generator that makes these systems less costly, easier to
maintain and much more suited to a regional bakery.
After the crackers finish in the Macrowave dryer,
they move to the packaging line where employees fill
trays. The crackers then go through a Formost Fuji
wrapper and Econo Seal packer. The products are visually inspected between every step. The bakery also has
a Heat and Control vertical form/fill/seal bagger. The

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Baking & Snack - December 2014

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