Energy efficient bread baking through the appliance of science

Rising energy costs and changing legislation are bringing the need for more efficient baking processes into much sharper focus. This will require greater scientific understanding of how to manipulate oven design and baking conditions to produce energy efficient designs. This article highlights the work carried out at the University of Leeds, UK, on a recent project on thermal energy management in commercial bread baking, funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC EP/G058504/1), in collaboration with Warburtons Ltd and Spooner Industries Ltd. This project focussed on industrial forced convection ovens, see Figure 1. The approach taken was to develop accurate Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods of the thermal air flows within convection ovens, validate them against experimental data and use them within formal optimisation methods to improve oven performance against practically-important design criteria.