BISCUIT MANUFACTURING UNIT

The term ‘Biscuit’ refers to the small round bread leavened with baking powder or soda and covers a large variety of sweet, salted, filled and coated biscuits. Biscuits are eaten by all sections of people across the board round the year.

They are, thus, mass consumption items with number of varieties and shapes. The market is scattered. There are some dominant national and regional brands. Biscuits can be manufactured at a location which is close to the market. The basic ingredients of biscuit are flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, sugar, shortening and milk solids.

Around the world Biscuits is the principal food and provides more nutrients than any other single food source. The value of grain in the world used for human consumption is over 2, 3 times of the value of the world iron and steel production. Although only 14% of the grain in the world is handled through international channels, cereal grains make up more than half of all the goods in overseas trade.
The same Biscuit is made up from the word ‘BIS’ which means twice and ‘Cut’ means balled suggesting that product should be twice balled. The Biscuit were originally developed to meet the requirement of longer life of the barley products and for this, purpose, the dough were made up and twice balled to make them moisture free to improve their keeping qualities. The Biscuit manufacturing was started a century ago mainly to meet the requirement of European Travellers. The industry was located near the sea port but today we have a large number of factories situated in various parts of the country. Producing best quality biscuits equivalent to international standards.

India at present processes mainly following varieties of Biscuits:

1. Plain Biscuit

2. Slightly Sweet Biscuits

3. Sweet Biscuits,

4. Short Biscuits and a small extent fermented biscuit. The plain type includes cheese milk and water biscuits. These contain little if any sweeting agents and a small proportion of fat. Slightly, Sweet Biscuits such as thin arrowroot, Marie and petil peurre contains 20-25 percent of sugar and 16-18 percent of fat. The sweet type contains a much higher proportion of sugar; these are cream Sandwich, the sugar coated and the Ginger Nut Biscuit. Short biscuits contain a high percentage of fat and sugar.

Biscuits are one of the important bakery items and can be used whole day irrespective of time. It is very common for morning breakfast and also used as snacks.

Biscuits are generally classified into soft biscuits, hard biscuits and crackers. Biscuit dough’s are made mainly from flour, fat, sugar and water with minor amounts of flavor, colors, and aerating agents and possibly eggs and fruits.

Obtained from the milling of wheat by the gradual reduction system. The object of milling process is to separate as cleanly as possible, the endosperm of the grain from the enveloping skins and embryo. The flour for biscuit should be weak and low in protein content; the protein content may be 8.5 per cent of less.

Fat is used in biscuit to remove hardness and to improve the shortness of the biscuits – that is to lower the Millard reaction and polymerization particularly in alkaline conditions and invert sugar is effective in diminishing checking in biscuits. Sugars also affect the heat denaturation of flour protein. Aerating agents commonly used are ammonium bicarbonate by itself and sodium bicarbonate with either sodium pyrophosphate or calcium hydrogen phosphate.

Ammonium bicarbonate has the advantage that it leaves no residue and evolves a greater volume of gas per unit weight than any of the others but, in the absence of phosphate and sodium ions, it leaves a raw taste in the biscuits. Sodium pyrophosphate residues give a burning taste and excess sodium bicarbonate give a fine granular texture to the biscuit (which is desired) but only at the expense of a burning taste.

The dough’s are prepared using above mentioned ingredients and formed to the regulated shape by one of various processers and baked in traveling ovens to moisture content of 1 to 4 percent.