Cryogenic freezing is being used to improve the handling characteristics of raw cookie dough to help speed production and packaging operations, says Mark DiMaggio, head of food and beverage at Linde LLC, a manufacturer and supplier of industrial and specialty gases.

Linde works with processors to optimize cryogenic solutions by either fully freezing or crust freezing cookie dough.

"Handling and forming of cookie doughs can vary with temperature, which can affect the repeatability of slicing and stacking operations, especially at higher production volumes," DiMaggio says.

In-line cryogenic processing with liquid carbon dioxide (CO₂) or liquid nitrogen (N₂) can offer advantages in speed, space and efficiency over other chilling or freezing methods, he says.

Cooling food using liquid nitrogen and carbon dioxide is used to enhance food processing. Image credit: The Linde Group. The specific depth of freeze on the cookie dough depends on the manufacturing process to be used for a given product. Linde's food team considers the dough ingredients, moisture levels, the shape and thickness of raw cookies, as well as production factors in engineering a system to apply the desired level of freeze while optimizing the use of cryogen.

For sliced or formed cookie dough packed in boxes, for example, a crust freeze can improve stackability to speed processing, resulting in the ability to increase production.

The company's Impingement Freezer can typically produce three to five times the capacity of a conventional cryogenic or ammonia-based tunnel freezer in the same linear space, DiMaggio says.

Some production plants are limited by storage space in their blast freezers. By fully freezing raw cookie dough at a controlled rate in-line, a bakery can maintain product quality and either increase or eliminate freezer storage time prior to shipment.

Even before the cookie dough is mixed, cryogenic technology can help boost process quality by chilling flour or other dry ingredients as they flow from silo to mixer.

Linde's dry-ingredient chilling system controls the injection of CO₂ into the transfer line to achieve a flour temperature within +/- 1ºF of the desired set point. According to the company, this can offer improvements in mixer repeatability when compared to what it says is “the variability” associated with traditional water ice or other CO₂ chilling methods.

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