Engineering Experiments Utilizing an Automated Breadmaker

Breadmaking is a technology with a long history, starting with the Egyptians baking loaves of bread over 6000 years ago. Since then, the process of bread making has become fully automated through the use of bulk transportation of ingredients, large mechanical mixers, conveyors, environmentally controlled proofing chambers, high efficiency ovens, cutters, and packaging equipment. This process of bread making can be classified into several unit operations including particle transport, mixing, fermentation, and baking. This industrial process has been fully automated in the relatively new bench top breadmaking machines. At Rowan we have used breadmaking machines for a number of experiments starting with freshman level mass balances, reverse engineering, data acquisition, to upper level heat transfer, biochemical reactions, and mixing. These relatively modest priced machines also have the added advantage of filling the laboratory with the ever pleasing aroma baking bread!