Thawing Frozen Baked Bread Loaves for Slicing: Process Control Considerations

Hello all,

I am hoping you all could help me with this...

We are starting a new product and it requires receiving frozen fully baked bread loaves.  

We slice them in a frozen state.

Put the sliced bread on a tunnel oven for toasting while some accumulate in bins for 15 mins max.

From there, they cool and go into a tumbler to be tossed with seasoning.

My question is would the frozen fully baked bread being sliced and essentially thawing while waiting to be sent through the tunnel oven be considered a thawing process and will it require a process control?

We are not monitoring any temperatures.

If the bread is not frozen,  we cannot slice it effectively as it crumbles and there is too much waste.

Your thoughts and any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

KBMB

I'm having a deja vue - past client, same thing -

In answer to your key question:  "will it require a process control?"

YES.

I'm having a deja vue - past client, same thing -

 

In answer to your key question:  "will it require a process control?"

 

YES.

Did you establish a time or a temperature or both?   Im not a bread person.   Is there much risk in thawing a frozen- fully cooked loaf?  

Hello Glenn,

Thank you for your quick response.

What type of control would be the minimum we would need to implement?

Any suggestions would be very helpful.

KBMB

Now from what you have described there isn't a sufficient time delay from frozen state to your 'toasting' tunnel oven process and you have a quality defect that hinders the process further as a control of sorts.  If it defrosts then its waste is what I assume and is not further processed.    

So in my experience with bakery items there a few main concerns to address. 

1. What is the pH of the bread?  General preservative structure if any.  This hinders any micro growth more for shelf life.  

2. What is the moisture content? If this is not affected by the short 15 min in the bin step you should be OK.  

3. What environmental aspects would affect the process? Since you are pushing through a toasting process it can be assumed that any environmental bio-load would be eliminated, thinking more yeast and mold in ambient air.  

I would still put some data on the time/temperature which can be easily done with a small temperature data logger or manually conducted.  This information would be used as a waste reduction and can be easily trained on with staff who are performing the processing.  

Hi KBMB,

This isn’t really a thawing step, it is a toasting step. I would be recording the tunnel temperature as a minimum.

You need to provide more information on the finished product to get sound advice. To what extent is the toasting process assisting in terms of food safety? I assume that the toasted product will have a longer life than normal fresh bread so what does the toasting process need to achieve? If it is a moisture reduction, that would need to be validated by doing process trials.

Kind regards,

Tony

Did you establish a time or a temperature or both?   Im not a bread person.   Is there much risk in thawing a frozen- fully cooked loaf?  

Kind of where I'm landing as I read this post.  I typed and deleted a big response to how I think it's fine to let a normally shelf-stable product like bread thaw at ambient temperatures.  But before I hit post, I re-read the op about how they're slicing the bread from frozen as a quality measure (cleaner cuts), and now I think there's an inherent risk of micro introduced as they're cutting the bread.  I don't know how a run-of-the-mill sliced bread maker validates a RTE product that has been cut, but there's some kind of leeway here.

I think most of us read "thawing" and our minds jump to most of the items we ship/receive frozen that must, at minimum, stay refrigerated to control potential micro growth (I'm in the fruit/veg business with a few meat plants in our chain as well).  But we are still talking about a product that is inherently shelf-stable, unless this specific bread maker is selling the op a bread that requires refrigeration.

More I think about this, more I think a validation might be needed.  How does it affect this bread to get cut frozen and then sit to thaw?  How do the slightly thawed slices fair in the toasting step vs ones that came up to ambient?

Hello all,

 

I am hoping you all could help me with this...

 

We are starting a new product and it requires receiving frozen fully baked bread loaves.  

We slice them in a frozen state.

Put the sliced bread on a tunnel oven for toasting while some accumulate in bins for 15 mins max.

From there, they cool and go into a tumbler to be tossed with seasoning.

 

My question is would the frozen fully baked bread being sliced and essentially thawing while waiting to be sent through the tunnel oven be considered a thawing process and will it require a process control?

 

We are not monitoring any temperatures.

If the bread is not frozen,  we cannot slice it effectively as it crumbles and there is too much waste.

 

Your thoughts and any comments would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you.

 

KBMB

What do you do with the loaves and sliced material if the oven stops functioning?  How long can the sliced bread wait in its 'thawed' state before toasting and still be acceptable?  An hour, a week? (I'm just reading the above "15mins max" as how things normally operate)  Is this a processing environment with a daily wet wash, a semiannual dry 'wash' or something in between?

The material is shelf stable, perhaps with a short shelf life, but stable none the less.  Changing the size of the pieces by slicing has minimal effect if done in a reasonably sanitary way.  Beyond a time limit on exposure to the environment against general spoilage I'm not seeing much of a reason for process control.