Research and Development

Cookie/Cracker Research

The Cookie and Cracker pilot bakery is ideal for testing or development work from bench scale to simulated commercial conditions. Product testing experience includes a wide range of product types: traditional cookies and crackers, low-fat and no-fat, pet food biscuits, and low moisture baked snacks.

Equipment Available for Use

• Mixing can be accomplished using a vertical mixer with a number of mixing blade attachments, horizontal mixing with a single, sigma blade configuration, or on high-speed mixers.
• Cookies can be machine formed using a wire-cutter, rotary molder, co-extruder, or vacuum extruder.
• Equipment for cracker production includes a lapping laminator, three roll sheeter, three sets of reduction rolls, and a dual roll cutting system.
• Baking can be accomplished using rotary shelf ovens, rack ovens, deck ovens or an impingement oven.
• Product can also be baked using a 30-foot indirect fired traveling band oven.
• Secondary processing of baked product includes an in-line oil spray unit, a single row, fully automatic sandwiching operation, and blast freezing to -30°F.

Technical Services

Assistance is available for evaluation of new ingredients or new applications of ingredients in low or intermediate moisture baked products. The cookie and cracker group also has experience with new product development and can utilize a wide range of equipment to make prototypes. Finished product can then be evaluated for attributes such as moisture content, water activity, and texture using state-of-the-art testing equipment for the food industry.

For more information:
Telephone: 785-537-4750 or 800-633-5137
FAX: 785-537-1493
Email: bstrouts@aibonline.org