From fresh to frozen: how to ensure quality control at every stage of baking

21 Jul 2025

Quality is the number one priority for all bakery manufacturers. But between the challenges of rising costs, changing customer needs, and embracing new technologies, it’s easy for quality control measures to drop.

Armed with the right processes, tools, and ingredients, however, quality control can be the difference between good products and exceptional products. Here’s our guide to making the freshest, most flavorful baked goods with quality control at every stage.

Why baking quality is key

Quality control is arguably the most important function in the manufacturing process. It touches almost every aspect of industrial bakery production with the goal of producing the best end product as efficiently and safely as possible. 

Put simply, if quality control succeeds, the business succeeds. 

Important things you need to consider when focusing on quality control

1. Consistent product quality across batches

Ensuring the consistency of flavor, texture, and freshness in bakery products requires monitoring, testing, and benchmarking every stage of the production process.
The most important measures to achieve this include:

  • establishing quality standards for ingredients 
  • assessing and optimizing critical stages of the baking process such as mixing, sheeting, molding, baking, and cooling
  • conducting regular tests for flavor, texture, and freshness

2. Food safety and regulatory compliance

First-class quality control helps prevent contamination, ensures compliance with regulations, and reduces the risk of costly product recalls, which can have a major impact on any food producer’s reputation.

Proper training and robust food safety processes are essential. Without them, quality control is ineffective, and the risk of reputational damage is massively increased.

3. Waste and error reduction

There isn’t an industrial or artisan baker who doesn’t want to increase efficiency and reduce waste. Through monitoring and optimizing every stage of the process, quality control can help reduce costs and reduce the environmental impact of production. 

Proper quality control is also an effective way to mitigate risks by identifying problems in production as early as possible.

How to be consistent in fresh and frozen bakery products

From the cleanliness of working environments to efficient logistics to implementing proper storage processes, every aspect of manufacturing needs to be on point to ensure consistent, repeatable results. 

One of the most critical factors in creating repeatable quality is the consistency of ingredients. If the quality of the ingredients used in each bake is inconsistent, the end product will be too. 

Which ingredients matter the most?

Fats

Fats affect everything from the taste, texture, and appearance to the freshness of baked goods. Ensuring that you use the right fats for the correct function consistently is key to creating high-quality and repeatable results. 

Flour

Flour quality couldn’t be more integral to the quality of final bakes. As the foundation for the structure of baked goods, inconsistent flour affects everything from texture to appearance, processing tolerance, and product volume.

Improvers

When it comes to consistency in baking, improvers are the star of the show. These natural preservatives are the unsung heroes when it comes to making baked goods of the highest quality as consistently as possible. 
They help you control all the uncertainties within the bread production process, such as variations in temperature, humidity, flour, and labor. In this way, they enable you to ensure consistent premium results with every batch you bake.

Puratos bread improvers

Our range of bread improvers will help you create incredible results time and time again, whether the end product is intended to be bought fresh or frozen. 

Packaged Bread Improvers

  • SOFT’R
    Designed specifically for packaged breads and soft baked goods, Soft’r gives customers the mouthfeel and freshness that they’re looking for. Made using the latest enzyme and emulsifier technologies, Soft'r improvers enhance freshness, volume, and tolerance throughout the entire shelf life.
  • INTENS
    Our modular solutions in the Intens range are perfect for a variety of bakery applications, including toast bread, buns, flatbreads, croissants, brioches, and baguettes. Each Intens product is designed to satisfy a specific area of functionality, ranging from dough rheology, visuals, and shape to shelf-life, texture, and nutrition, as well as cost reduction.

 

Frozen Bread Improvers

  • Double Bake
    ​​With Puratos's expertise and innovations in Frozen Bread technologies, Double Bake frozen bread improvers address parbaked dough challenges, enabling manufacturers to deliver high-quality parbaked frozen breads with peace of mind from production to point of sale.
  • Kimo
    Kimo ensures consistent quality and performance for laminated pastries, even after freezing. Designed for unfermented and pre-fermented frozen processes, it delivers excellent lamination, flakiness, and consistent rise. Powered by Puratos innovations, it offers superior tolerance and reliability, making it the perfect choice for high-quality bake-offs.

 

 

Puratos Cake improvers

  • ACTI
    Puratos's Acti-Fresh solutions optimize cake freshness throughout its shelf life, addressing diverse needs from large cakes to snack cakes. Designed using our advanced knowledge of enzymes and emulsifiers, Acti-Fresh enhances both immediate and long-term freshness. 

Fresh Bread Improvers

  • S500
    This is the world’s best-known and best-performing multipurpose improver, delivering complete peace of mind to bakers. S500 offers outstanding dough tolerance and bread volume, so you can achieve consistent premium quality across all applications.

Our commitment to quality

Quality control is as critical for industrial bakeries now as it has ever been. Even minor inconsistencies in ingredients or production can lead to significant variations in product texture, flavor, and appearance, ultimately affecting customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

By prioritizing quality control at every stage—from sourcing ingredients to production and delivery— all makers of baked goods can consistently meet the needs of customers, continually building trust in their offering.

With Puratos products like our range of improvers, bakeries can have more control over their end product, ensuring high-quality and repeatable results at all times. 

To learn more about our improvers or any other Puratos products that can help you build a reputation for excellence, contact us today.