Jörg Schulz is a baker in Germany who has found a cool money-saving new way of baking his bread.

“The NanoBak Technology, which we developed, is a new system of humidification, in which very small droplets are created via ultrasound, which then deliver humidity mainly to fermentation and proving chambers in bakeries,” he explained.

There is a new ingredient in the age-old recipe for breadmaking at Emden in Germany.

The NanoBak system allows the Sikken family bakery to cut energy costs on the production line by changing the way dough is proved

“NanoBak-Humidification means that water is made to oscillate by small piezo elements, which are activated by electric impulses,” Jörg went on. “That makes the water column vibrate and tiny droplets form at the surface. They are so light, that they are sort of suspended, then they are carried on a current of air into the proving chamber.”

NanoBak uses a mechanical process to create the light fog of moisture around the bread proving chamber.

That is a big advantage over conventional humidifiers that need a lot of energy to heat water until it evaporates.

Food processing consultant Dirk Sikken told euronews: “We realised that before our production was a bit hit and miss. It worked, but with different weather influences we couldn’t keep the process stable. The quality wasn’t the same all the time, so it was clear for us that we wanted to invest in a ‘cold’ technology.

“Normally it’s not that difficult to integrate a technology in the baking process, but it’s more difficult to tell the worker, who has done the same job for years, to work with this new technology and play with this system in order to get the best out of it.”

www.ttz-bremerhaven.de