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Food, feed & confectioneryAdvanced materials
Every broken biscuit is a yield you paid for and cannot sell. On a high-speed line, that loss builds fast across a shift. At Bühler, we treat biscuit breakage as a process challenge we solve together with our customers. Our experience across cookie and biscuit lines shows that most breakage traces back to a few controllable steps. Get those right, and more product reaches the pack whole.
Most biscuit breakage starts well before the oven. When dough is mixed unevenly, it bakes unevenly, and weak points crack later under stress. Piece weight and thickness matter as much as the recipe. Our solutions for biscuits and cakes shape dough by molding, wire-cutting, extruding, and depositing, and each format has its own weak spots. We help producers lock in consistent forming first. A uniform piece survives the journey downstream far better than a ragged one.
Uneven baking is a common source of hidden cracks. When one part of a biscuit dries faster than another, moisture keeps moving inside as it cools, and stress builds. Bakers call this checking. Food Safety Magazine explains that water migrates from wetter zones to drier ones inside a food, which is the same effect at work. We control heat and airflow across each oven zone to keep drying even. A steady cooling curve then lets moisture settle before packing, which keeps biscuit breakage low.
Every transfer point is a chance to break a biscuit. Drops, sharp turns, and hard stops all add small shocks. Running a fragile product too fast raises the forces at each step. Coverage of our latest lines describes modular designs and gentler depositing for consistent pieces at speed. We match handling to the strength of the product, so speed does not come at the cost of breakage. Smooth transfers and well-supported cooling conveyors protect thin biscuits all the way to the wrapper.
We would rather test than guess, and so would our customers. At Bühler's research and training centers, teams run full baking trials to see how a dough behaves on a complete line. Small changes to dough water, mixing time, or the oven profile often cut cracking sharply. This is where our process knowledge earns its keep. We measure biscuit breakage at each stage, find the real cause, and write the winning settings into a clear scale-up plan for the plant.
Breakage rarely announces itself. It shows up as a slightly lighter case weight and a fuller crumb tray at the end of the shift. On a line running tonnes per hour, even a few percent of loss is a large number by the end of the year. That is why we encourage customers to measure biscuit breakage as a rate, not a feeling. A quick count after the oven, after cooling, and after packing tells you where the damage happens.
The numbers also make the business case clear. Less breakage means higher saleable yield from the same ingredients and energy. It means fewer rejected packs and fewer customer complaints. It also supports sustainability targets, since every biscuit saved is raw material that does not go to waste. We bring our process knowledge to that conversation, then help translate it into concrete settings on the line. Our teams have seen the same pattern across many bakeries. Fix the forming and the bake, protect the cooling, and handle the product gently, and the loss falls step by step.
Reducing biscuit breakage is rarely one dramatic fix. It comes from steady control of dough, bake, cooling, and handling as one connected process. We work alongside producers to tune each step and hold it there. The payoff is practical. Higher saleable yield, less rework, and a cleaner product on the shelf all follow. It also means fewer complaints about broken packs, which protects the brand our customers have built. That partnership, backed by testing and real process knowledge, is how we help teams keep more of what they make. The first move is simple. Track where the pieces break today, then improve one step at a time
buhler.minneapolis@buhlergroup.com
+1 763 847 9900
Bühler
13105 12th Avenue North
Plymouth, MN
USA