In some bakeries, sourdoughs are made in mobile mixing bowls and kept in tempered rooms for maturity. Here, dough yields of 160 – 190 are worked with. One-stage, but also multi-stage methods can be realized. The same bowls in which the sourdoughs mature are
subsequently used for the bread production. For the production of dough, the other
ingredients are scaled and added and the bread dough mixed. Due to the many bowls, this method requires a great deal of space in the bakery or in the maturing rooms, however.
To rationalize this, the use of special installation technology is suitable which simplifies the production of sourdoughs in large quantities considerably. Here, fermentation containers are used where the temperature can be set and which enable the manufacture of large quantities of liquid sourdough in one step. One-stage or multi-stage sourdoughs can be made which, as a rule, are processed with dough yields of more than 200 to be able to remove them from the containers with the help of pumps later on.
Another possibility of the production of large quantities of sourdough is offered by the
separation of mixers and maturing containers as well as the use of cooling cells to store the sourdoughs. After the start of dough preparation in the mixers, the sourdoughs can be transported via pipes in tempered storage containers or sourdough silos to mature in these. Following the corresponding standing time, the liquid sourdoughs can be pumped directly into the mixing bowl for the production of the bread dough or stored cool. Should the requirement for sourdough rise, the possibility exists to add further silo cells. Liquid sourdoughs manufactured via a silo installation can, depending on the fittings of the installation, be processed using one stage or multi stages (Brandt & Gänzle 2006).
