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Ensure Food Safety and Maintain Compliance

Validating the kill step temperature as part of your preventive controls is a crucial component of your facility’s food safety plan. Our experts can validate your baking process for you, identify your oven’s cold spot, determine internal temperature, and calculate the lethality of the baking process.

  • Increase food safety assurance
  • Comply with FSMA validation requirement
  • Avoid conducting costly foundational research

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Kill Step Calculators

Free Baking Process Kill Step Calculators take recorded time and temperature readings, calculating the total process lethality for Salmonella destruction. Then they generate a report that can be used as supporting documentation for FSMA’s validation requirement.

AIB International collaborated with the American Bakers Association’s Food Technical and Regulatory Affairs Committee and researchers at Kansas State University and University of Georgia to create these free Baking Process Kill Step Calculators.


Crispy Cookies

Salmonella

 

Cheesecake

Salmonella

 

English Muffins

E. Coli & Salmonella

Flour Tortilla

Salmonella

 

Fruit-Filled Pastry

Salmonella

 

Pizza

E. Coli & Salmonella

Soft Cookies

Salmonella

 

100% Whole Wheat Multigrain Bread

Salmonella

 

Instructions for Use

  • D-value – Time required in minutes at a reference temperature to destroy 90% of an organism or its spores (equivalent to one log reduction).
  • Z-value – The number of degrees in temperature required to change the D value of a specific organism or its spores by 90% (equivalent to a factor of 10)
  • F-value – The process lethality or the time in minutes, at a specific temperature, required to destroy a certain number of viable cells.

Using the Calculator

  • Enter the Product & Process Specifications in cells D3–D9.
  • Download the temperature profile (time-temperature data) from a data logger to a blank Excel sheet.
  • Format the temperature profile (time-temperature data) for the specific product you collected so that the time is in one minute intervals.

*NOTE: Format the time so that you include at least the temperature data from 122°F/50°C during heating to the same temperature while cooling the product. It is acceptable to change the time intervals to larger values (such as ≥2 min) if the process is longer and the product is at 122°F/50°C for longer periods of time.

You NEED at least 20 time-temperature data points to accurately calculate the lethality of the process.

  • Copy and paste this time-temperature data to the Process Data table in the Baking Process Kill Step Calculator sheet.

The minutes should be placed in the column labeled Time (m) and the temperature in the column labeled Core Temp.

Interpreting the Results

  • The cumulative “F value (min)” at the bottom of the “Process Data” table (cell C44) indicates the total lethality of the process at a reference temperature.
  • The process lethality (in terms of decimal reductions or log reductions) is indicated at the bottom of the “Process Data” (cell D44).
  • The total process lethality is summarized in the table “Process Lethality” (cell I-10).
  • The charts plot the time-temperature profile of the process, the F values of the process at different time points, and the cumulative log reductions achieved at each of the time points.

Teach the Proper Way

I highly recommend any bakery to take a look at the calculator for their products, and I’d also suggest that they have an AIB International expert come out the first time to teach the proper way to perform the test.

Learn how Alvarado Street Bakery Uses AIB International Kill Step Calculators

Michelle ZimmermanPlant Environmentalist SQFP/PCQIAlvarado Street Bakery

Certification is provided by AIB International Certification Services, a wholly owned subsidiary and separate company. Use of AIB International’s consulting and training services does not influence certification outcome.