Manley's Technology of Biscuits, Crackers and Cookies

Duncan Manley, Duncan Manley

• Publisher: Woodhead Publishing
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780857093646
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Food Science
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Manley's Technology of Biscuits, Crackers and Cookies is widely regarded as the standard work in its field. Part one covers management issues such as HACCP, quality control, process control and product development. Part two deals with the selection of raw materials and ingredients. The range and types of biscuits is covered in part three, while part four covers the main production processes and equipment, from bulk handling and metering of ingredients to packaging, storage and waste management.

Eight expert authors have joined Duncan Manley in extensively updating and expanding the book, which is now some 25% longer than the previous edition. Part one now includes a new chapter on sustainability in the biscuit industry and the discussion of process and efficiency control is more detailed. In part two the information on wheat flour has been extensively revised to reflect recent developments and there are entirely new chapters on fats and oils and packaging materials. Photographs of the major types of biscuits now illustrate chapters in part three, which also includes a newly-composed chapter on the position of biscuits in nutrition. Finally, part four has been comprehensively reviewed and revised with the assistance of an author from a major machinery manufacturer.

With its distinguished editor and team of expert contributors this new edition consolidates the position of Manley's Technology of Biscuits, Crackers and Cookies as the standard reference work in the industry.

• Widely regarded as the standard work in its field
• Covers management issues such as HACCP, quality control, process control and product development
• Deals with the selection of raw materials and ingredients

1

Setting the scene: A history and the position of biscuits

D. Manley, Consultant, Duncan Manley Ltd, UK

Abstract:

Biscuits are a very significant part of the food industry in most countries of the world. This chapter describes what biscuits are and briefly outlines the history of their commercial manufacture. Early biscuits were simple but with industrial development a wide range of tasty products were mass produced. Chocolate coating and cream sandwiching heralded luxury treats and advances in packaging greatly increased shelf life.

Key words

biscuits

crackers

cookies

wafers

mechanisation

1.1 Introduction

The word biscuit derives from panis biscoctus which is Latin for twice-cooked bread and refers to bread rusks that were made for mariners (ships biscuits) from as long ago as the Middle Ages. The dough pieces were baked and then dried out in another, cooler, oven. They were very unattractive being made more or less from flour and water.

What are biscuits now? They can be staple foods, snacks, luxury gifts, dietary products, infant foods, dog and cat foods, and with additions of chocolate and cream, etc., they borderline with confectionery. They are all made with flour (usually wheat flour) and all have low moisture content and thereby long shelf life if protected from moisture and oxygen in the atmosphere. They are the original ‘convenience’ manufactured food.

The word ‘biscuit’ is an all-embracing term in Britain and several other countries. It includes items also known as crackers (a term derived from the USA for thin, non-sweet, products that made a noise of cracking when broken), hard sweet or semi-sweet biscuits, cookies (which is a name that originated from the Dutch Koekje meaning a small cake) and wafers which are baked between hot plates from a fluid batter. The name cookie was adopted in North America where the term ‘biscuit’ can be confused with small soda-raised breads or muffins. In other countries the term cookie is used principally for wire-cut products of rather rough shape that often contain large pieces of various ingredients like nuts and chocolate. Thus the British tend to use the term biscuit for everything and the Americans do not use the word biscuit for any of these items. Technically the difference between bread and biscuit is the level of enrichment with fat and sugar, and the moisture content. Between cake and biscuit the difference is that of dough consistency, and again the moisture content. In general, biscuits can be baked on a flat surface but cakes must be baked in containers because the dough is softer.

It is claimed that the only way to understand the present is to understand the past. So let us briefly consider the early history of biscuit making. It is perhaps appropriate that the author, as a British person, should be the one to write about the biscuit industry because it started in Britain and many biscuit types that were first developed and produced in Britain are still made and enjoyed all round the world. Britain led the industrial revolution which involved the design and construction of machines and can thereby also claim to be a leader in developing the biscuit industry. However, little seems to have been written about the history of biscuit manufacturing and this account will centre very largely on the situation as it developed in Britain.

The word biscuit in the English language is certainly old. Dr Samuel Johnson in his dictionary, published in 1755, gives a primary definition as ‘a kind of hard dry bread, made to be carried to sea’, and a secondary one of ‘a composition of fine flour, almonds and sugar, made by the confectioners’. William Shakespeare also refers to ships biscuits in his play As You Like It written about 1600. The first biscuits, in terms of mass production, were of an unsweetened type relating more to crackers in modern parlance.

Although the first biscuits were dried-out rusks, useful as long-life food for sea journeys, early cooks making confections with fat and sugar would have found that if little dough pieces are baked in a typical hot oven and taken out when they have a good colour and a stable structure they would not have been dry enough to be entirely crisp. Putting them back into a somewhat cooler oven to dry them out improved their eating qualities and also their shelf life. Baking from the start in a cooler oven for a longer period allows drying but results in less colouration and structure development. (The idea of separate moisture control from the development of texture and colour is a technique that has been returned to relatively recently with modern electronic technology as part of the baking process.) However, the term biscuits was applied originally to dried bread pieces. These were also sweetened and flavoured with spices. Other products like our modern biscuits were made but called by more cake-like names. For example, shortcake and shortbread, short dough types are very ancient. In 1605 there is reference to puff pastry made by placing butter between sheets of rolled out dough. ‘Wafers’ are probably the oldest types of biscuits; ancient records show that they were widely used in religious ritual. As a type of baked flour product they were introduced into Britain by the Normans from France (c. 1100). They were made on special wafer irons not only by bakers but also by wafer makers and at home. The products must have been cakelike similar to the gaufres of France today and not the thin crisp sheets we call wafers now. Wafers are made from batters and the recipes, used at least in France, were often enriched with eggs, wine or cheese. In 1605 there is reference to rolled wafers, i.e. wafers with enough sugar in the recipe to allow them to be rolled off the baking plate after baking. They would have been similar to the brandy snaps and rolled wafers of today.

Biscuits are a very significant part of the food industry in most countries of the world. Their success can be attributed to at least four key factors:

1. their relatively long shelf life

2. their great convenience as food products

3. the human liking and weakness for sugar and chocolate

4. their relatively good value for money.

1.2 The beginnings of biscuit manufacturing

The early biscuits, as Johnson’s dictionary definition indicates, were for mariners on long journeys and were formed from just flour, salt and water. In America they were known as pilot biscuits and later, hardtack. They were very laborious to make, were very hard to eat and in fact had to be soaked in a beverage or soup to make them palatable.

Biscuit manufacturing concerns, firstly, the invention of machinery to reduce the labour required. The first machines were for mixing and forming dough pieces followed by a mechanical oven for baking continuously. Later attention was given to mechanising the movement of dough and biscuits within the factory and later still to packaging.

Practically no mechanisation is recorded before the beginning of the nineteenth century, this had to wait for the use of steam to provide motive power. Water power, so important for the development of flour milling, textile manufacture, etc., seems never to have been used in the biscuit industry probably because early biscuit bakeries were at the sea ports where harnessing water power is more difficult. Electricity was not used until near the end of the nineteenth century, it offered transmittable power and lighting so important to modern factories.

At the end of the eighteenth century there are reports that dough mixing was done initially by hand then was finished off by the mixerman jumping into the trough and treading it with his bare feet! A certain amount of mechanisation was introduced to form a rough sheet of dough but the pieces were then cut out by hand as rectangles which were in turn worked by hand into circles and dockered (holes pierced through the dough piece) before baking. The sheeting machine was known as a brake. A dough brake is a pair of rolls where the gap between the rolls can be opened or closed. It had more than one function; it kneaded the dough, as a supplement to mixing, and permitted a clear sheet to be formed giving a smooth surface. The brake could also be used to laminate the dough with or without the inclusion of flour or fat between the sheets. Brake machines are still occasionally used for fermented, puff and mechanically developed doughs. The first commercial biscuit dough mixer seems to have been a barrel with a shaft through it driven from a steam engine. The shaft had a number of blades attached and when the dough was mixed it was removed through a door underneath. There was no mechanical development of the dough and the crumbly mass was then pressed together to form a sheet. (It is interesting that this technique is still used in some factories for Water biscuits where the dough is relatively dry and where a wetter dough would produce a much harder baked product.)

There was a report of a travelling oven built in 1810 which used a moving belt of wire mesh but this was not successful. However, travelling ovens were introduced into British biscuit factories around 1849–51 but were not generally accepted till near the end of the century. This is contrasted with the first reel oven, not so efficient as a travelling oven, which was claimed to have been invented in the USA in 1859. Reel ovens were standard in the USA until about 1930!

The early ovens were fired by coal but the travelling ovens were firstly heated with superheated steam through tubes running along the length of the oven. Later ovens were fired directly with gas and electrically heated ovens appeared much later. Also in the 1849 era there were great developments in mixing machines and new types of cutters. They were pioneered not so much by machinery suppliers as by entrepreneurs setting up biscuit factories. People like George Palmer, who had practical knowledge of baking, were able to design machines. Most of the early mixers were vertical spindle machines and the cutters were reciprocating, as they copied the way the task was done by hand. Incidentally, the first rotary cutter was invented in 1890 (another was patented in 1900 by Thomas L. Green & Co., USA) but it was a long time before such cutting was generally accepted. Drives for the forming machines were by layshafts driven from a large steam engine. It was not until the 1880 s and 1890 s that electricity was introduced but still the power was delivered through layshafts, gearboxes and belts to individual machines, meaning that speed adjustment was difficult. These factories were relatively dangerous places to work! There is some dispute about who set up the first biscuit factory using continuously running and integrated machinery. It may have been Jonathan Dodgson Carr in Carlisle when he invented a cutting machine in about 1831 (copying the principle of the printing press of the time) or Thomas Grant in the victualling yard at Gosport in 1829 but certainly we know a lot about the enterprise of George Palmer and his partner Thomas Huntley when they established, in 1846, the biscuit factory at Reading, west of London. This factory was the first to use continuously running machinery for making fancy biscuits, effectively the start of a completely new consumer industry.

As a result of this enterprise, and their very successful export business, British biscuits became known in most countries of the world. The biscuits were packed mostly in tins or tin-lined boxes of 40, 28 or 5 lb (about 18, 12 or 2.5 kg) capacity and this solved the problem of keeping the product fresh. As it happened, the brother of Thomas Huntley had an ironmongery business where the tins were made! Most of these tins were returnable so the handling, washing and relabelling was a major operation. In those early days, distribution in Britain was mostly by canal and water transport greatly reduced damage that vibration would have caused if transportation had been by road.

By 1870 the biscuit, principally cracker, market in the USA was well established but there were substantial imports of British biscuits. Machinery was also imported from Britain thus emphasising the role of the UK in the early growth of the biscuit industry. T&T Vicars in Liverpool was established in 1849, A M Perkins and Son in London in 1851 and Joseph Baker and Son in 1876. Perkins and Baker amalgamated in 1920 to form Baker Perkins.

Some of the earliest biscuits took the form of various fermented crackers such as cream crackers and soda crackers. The digestive biscuit was introduced by Alexander Grant in 1892. In 189...