Development of an inline measurement technique to assess the quality of wheat dough during the sheeting process

Abstract Dough sheeting is an important processing operation in the production of various bakery products. The surface cracks on laminated wheat dough are undesirable and generally affect the final quality of the baked products. Although approaches exist for crack detection in the food industry, there is still a need to transfer and adapt it to the desired application especially with respect to inline measurement in the baking field such as dough sheeting. Therefore, the objective of the proposed methodology is to design and develop an inline measurement technique capable of automatic detection and evaluation of the dough surface as well as its measurement in terms of crack ratio. By adapting this technique, different types of dough were tested for their sensitivity to different rolling steps which in turn provides the initial rolling behavior inferences of different dough varieties. The proposed algorithm for the detection of surface cracks is evaluated with various performance measures. Industrial relevance The work described in this research is a novel and innovative approach that offers to benefit manufacturers of sheeting equipment in the improvement of equipment design. The bakers owning small and medium-sized enterprises are specially privileged from the successful application of this study, because their competitive capability increases due to the possibility of cost reduction.