New way of formulating traditional biscuits can lead to significant efficiencies, sales growth and reduced waste

Biscuits can be staple foods, snacks, indulgences and can border on a main meal attraction. They are made with flour (usually wheat flour) and all have high moisture content but also a short shelf life. Producing biscuits can be an inconvenient process but they can also be a huge draw for restaurant goers. Cargill’s technical team simplified a biscuit formula while maintaining the “from scratch” flavor to benefit our customers’ top and bottom line results.

Market figures show that more and more people are buying breakfast from fast-food restaurants. Many people are already at one of these places buying coffee. Others just don't think they have enough time in the morning, so they often grab biscuit-based breakfast sandwiches on the go. While more restaurants are offering breakfast menus others are extending their breakfast offerings to all day. The opportunity for biscuit sales growth continues to expand.

Biscuits aren’t easy to produce

Biscuits aren’t easy to produce. Part of the challenge with supplying fresh biscuits in foodservice and retail settings is that it’s very difficult to adjust quantities quickly, according to demand. Ideally, you would be able to roll and bake biscuit quantities in a predictable manner. Conventional baking methods assume biscuits will sit in a hot box for up to 90 minutes after baking for convenience and quick service. If you have a steady and predictable level of biscuit demand every day, this would work fine. If you need to produce biscuits “as needed” you run into problems with this model as predicting demand is never easy and often, you overproduce and create waste. 

A customer came to us asking for help improving their efficiency in producing biscuits because their method of producing biscuits created waste and inconsistency. Their process wasn’t fast enough and didn’t allow for demand adjustment. They ended up with a lot of wasted biscuits in an effort to make sure their customers were satisfied. Their main stipulations were that the biscuits must remain fresh tasting and maintain a “from scratch” flavor along with an ideal appearance.

The baking technical team at Cargill focused first on producing fresh “from scratch” biscuits more quickly, as a means of cost management.  They achieved an equivalent biscuit in a shorter amount of time with slight ingredient adjustments.  The new biscuit formula saved some production time and ultimately moved in the right direction, but the savings weren’t significant enough to merit customer adoption.

Producing a new “mix”

In order to produce a biscuit with substantial differentiation from the current biscuits, the technical team needed to be open to refrigeration and producing a new “mix”, despite conventional biscuit baking wisdom.  It is assumed that refrigerated and mix-based biscuit would never taste like they are “from scratch”. These biscuits needed to be fresh tasting and available “as needed”, not constrained by 90 minutes in a hot box. In order to produce them, they needed to produce a mix that would produce dough that could tolerate refrigeration to help with preparation, bake in 15 minutes like the current biscuit and maintain the fresh “from scratch” flavor and appearance.

Customer biscuit requirements: Tolerate refrigeration to help with preparation Bake in 15 minutes like the current biscuit Maintain the fresh “from scratch” flavor and appearance

The biscuit mix produced addressed issues with flavor and acidity.  The biscuits needed to maintain the “buttermilk-flavor notes” without the fresh buttermilk.  They used flavor technology to address the buttermilk notes and acid technology to add acidity.  This technology advance allows us to produce the right level of flavor and acidity to capture the taste of a fresh buttermilk biscuit.

Along with addressing consumer taste demands, the biscuit formula also produced dough pucks that tolerated sitting in the refrigerator for up to 14 hours. The refrigeration functionality coupled with a 15 minute bake time solved the issue of adjusting quantities quickly, according to demand.  With this formula, the customer would only need to predict demand 15 minutes in advance as opposed to holding biscuits in a hot box up to 90 minutes before serving. The new mix would allow tighter control over waste, plus more consistent product from outlet-to-outlet, and shift-to-shift.   It also removed the need to have a specially trained biscuit maker on all shifts.

Taste test success

Taste tests proved to be tremendously successful. Tasters couldn’t tell the difference between the “from scratch” and the new formula biscuits.  Now producing biscuits could be managed nimbly and efficiently instead of overproducing and creating excessive waste.