Small bakehouse: which bakery equipment for dividing, resting and moulding without losing space?

Why does the bakery lab so often lack space?

Because many artisans work in a bakery that they have not sized for their needs, and division, proofing, and shaping are the steps that consume the most floor space.

City center bakery, taking over an existing business, a shop whose sales grew faster than the walls: bakery layout is often done under constraint. The small bakery becomes a puzzle of organization.

After division, the dough pieces must rest before being shaped. This proofing of the dough pieces is traditionally done on tables or Parisian boards, which take up floor space and require repeated handling.

Result: back and forth movement, boards to store, dough pieces exposed to air currents, and a work surface never free. Gaining space, then, means first rethinking the passage between the divider and the moulder.

How to save space in a small bakery room?

By grouping division, fermentation, and shaping in a single unit, and by storing dough pieces vertically rather than on trays.

Manufacturers of professional bakery equipment have conceived mechanization as an integrated system, not as a series of machines placed side by side.

• First level: combine the divider, dough relaxer, and shaper. According to MÉRAND, this assembly already provides time and space savings compared to resting on tables or boards.
• Second level: the automatic bakery line. The weighing divider divides and pre-rounds the dough pieces, a swing loader loads them, lets them relax, then sends them to the shaper. Between these steps, the operator no longer needs to handle the dough pieces.

The gain is also a time saving: replacing a hydraulic divider with a weighing divider eliminates weighing and putting into trays, which is approximately 30 minutes saved per batch.

Does compact bakery equipment damage the dough?

No, if it respects relaxation, extension, and hygiene: these criteria, more than the size of the machine, determine bread quality.

• Relaxation: a dough piece that has not rested enough will not extend properly during shaping.
• Extension: for consistent baguette shaping, the dough piece must arrive relaxed and properly centered in the shaper.
• Hygiene: a more enclosed piece of equipment must clean easily, including pockets and cladding.

These criteria matter in the choice of a bakery moulder just as they do in the choice of a proofing chamber, regardless of the bread shaping method targeted.

What is a bakery balance scale?

The bakery rest chamber, also called resting chamber or proofing chamber, receives dough pieces between dividing and shaping. It stores them in pockets instead of laying them out on boards. It frees up the lab floor.

All rest chambers do not treat the dough piece in the same way. On BMF systems, the rest chamber is called static: each dough piece remains in the same pocket of the load until unloading, unlike a dynamic rest chamber such as the one on the DynaProof system.

This resting without movement optimizes fermentation and promotes elongation in the shaper. This is a direct advantage for baguette shaping, where elongation ensures product consistency.

As for hygiene, the pockets are made of Nyltex and the lining is Dibon panels, to facilitate cleaning and maintenance. Depending on the version, the BMF rest chamber has up to 560 pockets and accepts dough pieces up to 1,000 g.

BMF Compact or BMF Leader: which automatic line for a small bakery? The BMF Compact for a very space-constrained bakery, as it houses the moulder in the swing arm. The BMF Leader if the lab has length, as its moulder is placed outside.

The BMF Compact for a very space-constrained bakery, as it houses the moulder in the swing arm. The BMF Leader if the lab has length, as its moulder is placed outside.

In a small bakery, the BMF Compact is the most direct answer. By housing the vertical or horizontal moulder inside the divider, it eliminates the space that a moulder placed alongside would have occupied.

The BMF Leader requires more length. In return, its long receiving belt leaves room to collect the moulded dough pieces.

In both cases, an optional double transfer belt allows feeding 2 machines after dumping, for example a moulder and an eccentric rounder. A single division and resting group then serves both elongated products and rounded products.

On the ground: the bakery Au P'tit Four, in Quebec

Au P'tit Four is a family-run artisanal bakery from Quebec, founded in 1969. It offers over 200 products, from breads to donuts, including brioche and cakes, sold at the counter and through local supermarkets.

In 2021, the team needs to replace a very old machine. They choose a complete automatic line: Lofty volumetric divider, BMF Leader rounder, Trégor vertical moulder, and RotaBall rounder. The project is carried out with distributor Distribution Doyon.

What first stands out to Yanick Berube, co-manager, is the space gained: "I really appreciated the fact that the machines are compact because I was able to achieve significant space savings." The detail matters for a small lab: it's the Leader version, with the shaper on the outside, that equips this bakery. 

Even without housing the shaper in the swing arm, grouping division, relaxation, shaping and balling in the same unit already frees up space. Production, highly varied, also benefits from the group's versatility.

A small bakery oven does not require producing small quantities

Lack of space is no longer a barrier to mechanization. By combining division, proofing, and shaping in a single unit, and by working at height rather than at ground level, a cramped bakery lab gains in consistency and comfort without expanding.

Do you have a bakery equipment project or bakery layout plan? Contact our teams to study the configuration suited to your lab. Also discover the group in production, with videos to back it up, on the automatic group BMF Compact & Leader sheet.