Baking is widely considered an art, but that doesn’t exclude it from also being a science. Using concrete data in baking is essential for those producing baked goods on a large scale and with constantly high throughput.

Qualitative data is great for producers — how their products taste, what colours people like to see, the opinions that consumers have about different baked goods — but what about quantitative data?

What needs to be measured to determine whether a cake is good quality?

Taste may be subjective, but there are markers of quality that any good cake should satisfy.

These can differ depending on the style of the cake itself, but generally they include:

Shape

Bakes can take many shapes for novelty or tradition, but buyers will know a ‘wrong’ shape when they see one. A cake that hasn’t risen properly won’t be the expected shape, and anybody who sees this will be able to mentally reverse engineer this wrong shape and infer that the product wasn’t properly made.

The proper shape of a cake goes beyond aesthetics.

Colour

The ‘golden brown’ rule of thumb generally reins in baking, as many bakes transform from off-white dough to their warmer colours. Like shape, this colour is an expectation of thorough baking and quality.

Though there is only so much differentiation between colours that can be done with the human eye, lab* colour analysis can give concrete data on which bakes have the right colour and which are lacking.

Cell size and number

Cells are important in many bakes, and they can affect the lightness, taste, and texture of a cake in subtle but significant ways. Larger cells could indicate overmixing cake batter before baking, for instance.

This can lead to ‘tunnelling’, where gas bubbles have been trapped as the overmixed batter has formed gluten. Large cells can also indicate an overuse of leaveners.

How C-Cell measures samples

C-Cell makes the process of analysing a cake effortless. All the machine needs is a single slice of the cake to act as a sample. Once loaded into the tray, C-Cell takes sharp images of the sample using its high-quality optics and provides an objective analysis of the sample quality. Parameters such as colour, cell size and elongation, shape, and more can be set and measured for the most thorough overview of cake quality possible.

Just like many bakeries have an internal bread score that helps them judge the quality of their bread by unique standards, cakes could also be scored using an internal system with the help of C-Cell.

Type of data produced and how it can be used to improve bakes

C-Cell produces a wide range of data types that can be applied for all kinds of cakes. These data include:

  • Size
  • Shape
  • Colour
  • Cell size/quantity
  • Inclusions (cherries, chocolate chips, etc.)
  • External features

Using objective data, conclusions can be drawn for your bakes. It could be that your cakes use X% more inclusions than competitors and thus need to be reduced. Perhaps a certain proportion of your cakes feature tunnelling and the process of mixing needs to be reviewed.

There are many ways that quantitative data can be employed for better cake baking.

To learn more about how C-Cell can transform your bakes, contact us today.