Baking
Practical Action
At a larger scale of operation, machines are used to form biscuit dough using one of four methods: 1)
a die forming machine has a metal roller with shaped cavities: a sheet of dough is pressed into the
cavities and the excess is scraped away to leave the shaped biscuit dough; 2) two cutting rollers cut
shapes from a sheet of dough and simultaneously imprint a design on the upper surface using raised
characters on the rollers; 3) a ‘wire-cut’ machine extrudes soft dough through dies, and wires cut the
dough into the correct lengths; 4) a ‘rout press’ (similar to a wire-cut machine but without the
cutting wires) cuts extruded dough to the required length using a reciprocating blade. These
machines are considerably more expensive than the manual equipment and are suited to larger scale
bakeries.
Pie and tart cases are formed from sheets of shortcrust pastry using one of three methods:
1) ‘Hand-made’ pies are formed by creating a cylinder of pastry that is joined to a circular base and
filled with a filling of meat, fish, vegetables etc. Then a circular pastry lid is either crimped on or
sealed with egg wash;
2) Sheets of pastry dough are pressed into reusable pie moulds or single-use aluminium foil dishes
to form the shape of the pie or tart. The filling is then added, and for pies, a sheet of dough is laid
over the top to form the lids and crimped around the edges and/or sealed with egg-wash (tarts do not
have lids). In each method, the lids may be decorated with indentations, latticework pastry strips, or
small shapes (e.g. leaves, hearts etc.) cut from sheet pastry using biscuit cutters (Figure 3a);
3) Pies are formed using a manual blocking/lidding machine (Figure 4). First a weighed piece of
pastry dough is placed into a pie or tart mould and the blocking head is lowered to press the pastry
to a uniform thickness. The casing is then filled and covered with a circular piece of pastry, and the
blocking head on the machine is replaced by a lidding head. This is lowered and simultaneously
forms and decorates the lid and trims off excess pastry. A video clip of this machine is available at
www.johnhuntbolton.co.uk/Gallery/Video/easy_pieF.htm. The advantages of the blocking/lidding
machine are first time-saving because the casing pastry does not have to be rolled to a sheet and the
lid is simultaneously sealed and decorated; and secondly it produces uniform thicknesses of both the
casing and lid. With a larger investment, two machines can be used to speed up production, one
fitted permanently with a blocking head and the other with a lidding head, or the manual equipment
can be replaced by semi-automatic electric machines together with a depositor used to measure out
uniform amounts of filling.
Small pastie makers have a two-piece hinged mould that
forms the shape of the final pastie (e.g. ‘Cornish’ pastie or
slice pastie filled with meat, vegetables or cheese). A sheet of
dough is placed over both halves of the mould, the filling is
added to the lower half and the lid is lowered to crimp, seal
and decorate the edges. Video clips of manual and semi-
mechanised moulding equipment are available at
www.johnhuntbolton.co.uk/English/Pages/gallery.html.
Figure 4: Manual pie forming and
lidding machines (John Hunt Ltd.
at www.johnhuntbolton.co.uk)
To form bread dough into the required shape, a small manual
dough divider (Figure 5a) is used to produce uniform sized
pieces. At larger scales of operation, cut pieces of dough can
be shaped using either a
conical moulder (Figure 5b), where they are formed into ball
shapes, or in a cylindrical moulder that shapes dough into
cylinders. The cylindrical moulder has 2-4 pairs of ‘sheeting
rollers’ that have successively smaller gaps, to roll the dough
gently into a sheet. This is then rolled into a cylinder; the
ends are sealed and it is deposited into a baking tin.
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