UK bakery manufacturer Warburtons has developed new technology designed to speed up the assessment of dough’s stickiness in commercial bakeries.

The Bolton-based bakery firm has teamed up with Stable Micro Systems (SMS), experts in texture analysis instrumentation, to create the Warburtons Dough Stickiness System.

The testing rig aims to give a more realistic evaluation of the stickiness of dough, while testing it under controlled conditions to minimise exposure to atmospheric variables.

Warburtons’ research, development and engineering teams worked with SMS to create the testing box, which can handle sample sizes of 500g and 900g-1,000g. Dough is placed into the unit and a retaining plate is placed on top, so that a narrow blade can be driven through, offering bakers an accurate assessment of compression peak and area.

SMS’ Exponent software can then calculate how sticky the dough is by the height of the adhesion peak and the size of the adhesion area.

The firm claims the system can test dough at high speeds, canbe cleaned easily between testing and minimises the need for environments with specific temperature levels.