Baking Innovation Lab

The Baking Innovation Lab, within the Hartwick College Center for Craft Food and Beverage, is a resource for quality testing, research, and education that supports small and mid-sized producers and processors of local cereals and grains; including, growers, bakers, and food product developers.

PARTNERSHIP FOR FOOD & GRAIN INNOVATION

The City of Oneonta along with Hartwick College has developed a 3,500-square-foot Baking Innovation Lab and classroom to provide testing of grain and flour, a pilot mill for production of 100% whole grain flour from a wide variety of grains, and a bakery to demonstrate and test processes and ingredients.

The project will support the region's agricultural industry and bolster Oneonta and Hartwick College's leadership in food and grain innovation.

MILLING & BAKING TESTING SERVICES

The Baking Innovation Lab will provide convenient, affordable, and reliable quality testing of locally produced raw grains, flour, and other grain-based products to assess quality, functionality and sensory properties for growers, bakers, and food product developers throughout the Northeast.

Full Listing of Testing Services Coming Soon!

STONE MILL & BAKERY

The Baking Innovation Lab will be home to a pilot stone mill and bakery that will be used to develop and demonstrate processes with local grains, test formulation changes to produce sample products for evaluation, and to develop marketing to showcase baked goods made with local flour.

Research will be conducted on novel varieties of soft and hard wheats as well as ancient grains such as spelt, einkorn, and emmer, for evaluation and experimentation.

BAKING INNOVATION LAB

Research & Testing Equipment

The Farinograph-TS rheometer provides you with a reliable, reproducible picture of the water absorption and kneading properties of flours, in consideration of international standards.

A versatile analyzer that provides automated testing of flour and dough characteristics. The instrument is self-controlled with its own cooling system, automatic water injection, and automatic positioning, crushing and blowing of the dough patties. The Alveolab® is more adaptable with a wider range of protocols and meets international standards.

The Rheofermentometer measures all types of yeast dough for dough development, the production of gas due to yeast action, the porosity of the dough, and the tolerance of the dough during proofing. The Rheo F4 is the only analyzer that provides all the key measurements for understanding dough behavior during proofing.

SDmatic is a simple and precise instrument to measure damaged starch in flours for the milling and baking industries. It is a fully automated enzyme-free analyzer that produces a reliable measurement of starch damage with only one gram of flour and within 10 minutes.

The Infratec 1241 is a whole grain analyser using near-infared transmittance technology to test multiple parameters (moisture, protein, oil, starch etc) in a broad range of grains.

The Perten Falling Number® System measures alpha-amylase enzyme activity in grains and flour to detect sprout damaged grain allowing users to optimize grain products for their intended use. Alpha-amylase activity is crucial to the final product quality of bread, pasta, noodles and malt.

When baking bread and producing noodles or pasta, the flour gluten content and strength will determine the quality of the finished product. The Perten Glutomatic® System is the world standard for determination of gluten quantity and quality.