Bakery - Proofing Boxes & Cleaning
Hello all -
I am a newly hired QA in a new bakery company that is rapidly growing. The process uses literally hundreds of hard plastic dough boxes multiple times per day to proof the dough and cleaning is a challenge due to layout.
Key points:
There is only 1 formulation of dough with just wheat and soy as allergens, and therefore allergen profile is shared across all products in the entire facility. Finished products are par-baked technically as they will be further processed, but generally brown and exceed 200F in the bake step (which I'm able to validate as a kill step).
We are aiming to be SQF certified within the next month. (I've implemented SQF in 3 other facilities).
The dough has a live yeast in it and is proofed for about 30 minutes - 1 hour in a proof room.
I'm looking for some thoughts.
Do you think a literal dry clean 1/day on these proofing containers (pre kill step), in which a clean dry towel is used to wipe out the flour/dough residue off, apply sanitizer, before restacking could be justified? Then doing a periodic "deep clean" in which they go through the full detergent/rinse/sanitize/dry step of maybe once a month or once every 2 weeks.
I'm working through if there are any hazards due to this process that I'm not thinking of, and how I can realistically justify this process.
Allergens: Non-issue, and if introduced in the future will necessitate a wet clean.
Micro: Dry, so restricts growth (not survival) - live yeast generally creates competitive inhibition once dough is added back. Plus most pathogens (Salmonella, Listeria, E.Coli) would be negated by cooking as this is pre-kill step regardless.
Other benefit: Not introducing more water to the environment during the day.
Recalls: I think we could justify not recalling based on foreign material issues from a Supplier, and micro it's going through a kill step. (Ingredients are very base level, wheat flour, oil, salt, etc.)
We have an ATP meter and I was able to show substantial reduction on a trial (from 1500 to about 250RLU), which isn't spectacular but isn't shabby either.
Thanks for thoughts!
Following as it's all relevant for me too. I think anyone moving from non-bakery to bakery is initially a little surprised? shocked? bewildered? by the lack of cleaning.
I would say - as long as there is no allergen issue, you shouldn't be stressed about cleaning. Most bakeries do a sort of 'scrape down' clean.
Maybe to validate do some pathogen testing? But personally, I think ATP is a bit of a waste of time here. ATP catches food residues and bacteria... how worried are you even about an insufficient clean? It's all getting baked ;)
Have you ever heard of bread being the cause of a recall due to micro? I certainly haven't, but there is a first for everything.
It's also why baking is almost never a CCP as the temp goes well over the temp needed to ensure all that (Salmonella?/E.coli?) from the flour is killed off.
Cleaing shoud be risk based, so a risk assessment for cleaning frequency could be useful for you, where you justify how you do things. That's next on my list ;)
I would also be focusing my time on making sure the air isn't too mouldy so your bread doesn't go mouldy. Those damp environments...
Just my thoughts. Sounds like it's going well for you.
I would try use a scraper rather a towel ´towels can be gross and be a source of foreign object contamination.
I would also try and drop the daily sanitation, don't you just introduce a risk of chemical contamination. Better to do a monthly deep clean. ?
Following as it's all relevant for me too. I think anyone moving from non-bakery to bakery is initially a little surprised? shocked? bewildered? by the lack of cleaning.
I would say - as long as there is no allergen issue, you shouldn't be stressed about cleaning. Most bakeries do a sort of 'scrape down' clean.
Maybe to validate do some pathogen testing? But personally, I think ATP is a bit of a waste of time here. ATP catches food residues and bacteria... how worried are you even about an insufficient clean? It's all getting baked ;)
Have you ever heard of bread being the cause of a recall due to micro? I certainly haven't, but there is a first for everything.
It's also why baking is almost never a CCP as the temp goes well over the temp needed to ensure all that (Salmonella?/E.coli?) from the flour is killed off.
Cleaing shoud be risk based, so a risk assessment for cleaning frequency could be useful for you, where you justify how you do things. That's next on my list ;)
I would also be focusing my time on making sure the air isn't too mouldy so your bread doesn't go mouldy. Those damp environments...
Just my thoughts. Sounds like it's going well for you.
I would try use a scraper rather a towel ´towels can be gross and be a source of foreign object contamination.
I would also try and drop the daily sanitation, don't you just introduce a risk of chemical contamination. Better to do a monthly deep clean. ?
Hi AJL,
Re ^ (red) - But not necessarily Bacillus spp spores ?. (discussed here previously at some length :smile: )
Not experienced in baking operations, but if the dry clean is generally accepted by this industry, then the only potential gap I find is storing them between uses. You described stacking them up after applying a sanitizer. I'm imagining the bottoms/outsides touching the inner part of the tray below, so hoping you don't identify any risks from where the tray had been sitting (never on the floor, always on a clean work table suitable for food).
Do you need to address rotation? If a stack of trays gets buried in the back of your pile and unused for an extended period because other stacks always get grabbed first, one could argue it has become idle without proper cleaning before being stored.
Lastly, are you a 24/7 operation? Again, I'm not experienced in baking, but I run off the assumption that if you close on weekends, the GFSI schemes tend to demand a full sanitation performed before idling over a weekend. I got around this in a spice plant years ago because management had defined "idle" in their documents as more than two days. Routinely we would run our equipment empty on Friday night, cover everything with food grade poly, then inspect Monday and resume the production run. It was always a point of contention, but they accepted our risk analysis on it and let it fly. So long as you can defend your practices, you should make it through.