Food color matters. Whatever delectable treats your company produces should have a clearly-defined and well-maintained color palette. Color is yet another tool that helps you measure ingredient freshness, proper protocol, and brand consistency. At HunterLab, we're passionate about helping you understand why color matters for any food — even the classic bun.
When talking about bread, pastries, and any baked good, color is often the determining factor for whether your potential customer chooses from your display or your competition's. If your bun is too light, it looks undercooked and raw — a mistake that can lead to foodborne illness. If your buns are too dark, they appear burnt, deteriorating flavor and making the bread hard and unappetizing.
With that in mind, you have to ensure every bun that comes out of your ovens is the same beautiful color consumers have come to expect from their bread products.
Sometimes, though, it can be challenging to determine how consistent your color is, especially over time. Even when you use the same ingredients and bake them using the same processes, your bun color measurement can vary. A scientific measurement system can help you find outliers with ease and help you further perfect your manufacturing processes.
In bun and other food color measurements, spectrophotometers are the tool of choice to accurately gauge color the way human eyes perceive it. Depending on the model you have, they can measure using a range of standard measurements, like hex codes or RGB numbers. With a quality spectrophotometer, you can gain objective measurements that enhance quality assurance as you distribute your products.
Finally, we would be remiss not to mention another factor of bun coloring that's helpful in determining freshness — the tie color. When buns and loaves of bread come in bags, they're often tied shut using a colored tie. These ties all tell you the same thing — the day of the week that particular bag was packaged. This gives consumers a further indication of how fresh their buns are.
When you package your bread for sale, make sure you're following the standard tie systems to deliver freshness to consumers. Remember that the colors go in alphabetical order, starting with Monday:
Ready to keep your buns the beautiful color they deserve to be? So is Aeros, HunterLab's proprietary solution to bun color measurement. Request a quote today to start working smarter with non-contact measurements and smart sensor technology, which delivers clear, well-defined results for every batch.
Mr. Philips has spent the last 30 years in product development and management, technical sales, marketing, and business development in several industries. Today, he is the global market development manager for HunterLab, focused on understanding customer needs, providing appropriate solutions and education, and helping to solve customer color challenges across these industries and cultures.LinkedIn