Shelf life in baking is always a big topic. How far can you push your product? Whether you’re trying to increase your time, or just last a few days, you HAVE to look past your ingredients.
Look at: Sanitation Plans
Keeping equipment, surface areas, floors and air filters clean and dry can impact shelf life in a big way. To truly be effective, a sanitation plan will help you stay on track.
An sanitation plan should include things like:
- Scheduled daily and periodic cleaning
- Written sanitation procedure to explain how sanitation tasks should be accomplished
- Training to help personnel understand the program and carry it out correctly
- Chemical use policy, and instructions for choosing and using cleaning chemicals properly
- Inspections to check on the cleaning
- Validation to demonstrate the program’s effectiveness
But proper sanitation needs to start from the beginning. That’s why a key prerequisite for food production is Sanitary Design. This covers things from building design to layout to the equipment used.
Sanitary design focuses on:
- Materials of construction for food and nonfood contact surfaces (e.g., metals, plastics, composites, elastomers)
- Design and fabrication of food and nonfood contact surfaces
Need help with your sanitation design and plans? Start here.
