Puratos: Unleash the Power of Liquid Dough Testing for Cake Flour Mixes
The cake industry faces a major challenge in ensuring consistent quality for highly hydrated batters that have long been impossible to characterize objectively. Through its collaboration with KPM Analytics, Puratos is pioneering a new approach by applying the Mixolab 300 to liquid batter analysis, unlocking deeper formulation understanding and improved product performance.
A Fruitful Collaboration Between Puratos, KPM Analytics, and the Revolutionary Mixolab 300 Universal Flour & Dough Characterizer
The global cake industry represents about one-quarter of the overall more than $400 billion bakery market. Despite this size, it is underserved with tools to ensure cake quality and consistency due to the complexity of ingredients, high water content in dough, and no standard measurements available. Traditional rheological instruments cannot accurately analyze the fluid nature of cake batters, which makes objective testing nearly impossible.
This was the case before the introduction of the Mixolab 300 Universal Flour & Dough Characterizer, a first-of-itskind rheological instrument equipped with protocols and accessories for testing all types of doughs, including liquid doughs and batters.
Building on their experience with the predecessor, the Mixolab 2, Puratos accepted the challenge to be the first user to apply Mixolab 300 and its batter-testing capabilities in a real-world production setting.
PURATOS: A FOCUS ON BATTER QUALITY CONTROL
Puratos is a global leader in innovative bakery, patisserie, and chocolate solutions, with a strong focus on research and development. Founded in 1919, Puratos products are present in 135 countries with 75 production units in 52 different countries.
The Puratos brand is no stranger to KPM Analytics, and in particular, the Mixolab Universal Flour & Dough Characterizer. Puratos’ interest in the Mixolab started with the work of one of their divisional offices, Puratos Serbia, who, during the COVID-19 lock down, used the Mixolab 2 to build a comprehensive database linking flour quality parameters with baking performance. This pioneering initiative demonstrated the value of the instrument and positioned it as a reference tool for flour and dough analysis within the group.
Thanks to the influence of Puratos Serbia, several other Puratos facilities, including the Global R&D headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, now make Mixolab an essential part to their quality control methods. There are Mixolab 2 units at the Global R&D site that are used for account support and or local flour analysis, according to Marko Bacanac, Puratos’ Bakery R&D Manager for Northern and Eastern Europe.
Around the beginning of 2025, Bacanac and his global R&D team agreed to be part of a beta study of the Mixolab 300. “We were looking for a way to analyze batter behaviors and to understand the best way to combine ingredients and raw materials to guarantee the best products for our customers,” said Bacanac.
THE MIXOLAB 300 JOURNEY BEGINS
Soon after, Bacanac received his Mixolab 300 analyzer excited and ready to charter forward to places no Mixolab has gone before. “The first challenge was to design a protocol for testing batters. Since we were the first to try this, and there was no other literature or experiences to reference, we needed to use scientific prediction in combination with the results to draw our conclusions,” said Bacanac.
The protocol was a collaborative effort, bringing together expertise from Group Research Services (GRS) and practical formulation knowledge from application teams. Each adjustment, whether batter weight, test temperature, or phase duration, was refined based on early trial results. This iterative process reinforced Puratos’ belief that every batter product requires a tailored test curve, reflecting its unique process and baking characteristics.
POSITIVE EARLY FINDINGS & INSIGHTS
According to Geertrui Bosmans, Research Manager Cereal Derivatives at Puratos, the Mixolab 300 extends rheological testing to very low-viscosity systems such as cake batters, enabling precise characterization of formulations that were previously untestable with conventional instruments.
While still in the early stages, Puratos first trials with the Mixolab 300 revealed promising avenues:
- Correlation Discovery: Initial tests showed correlations between batter behavior and final cake quality, a finding that Puratos plans to explore further.
- Enhanced Understanding: The study helped Puratos deepen its scientific knowledge of batter dynamics, paving the way for more controlled and consistent formulation work.
Collaboration with KPM was particularly strong at this stage. As Bacanac noted, both Puratos and KPM Analytics teams shared a genuine passion for knowledge and discovery.
LOOKING AHEAD: HOW MIXOLAB 300 WILL EVOLVE WITH PURATOS
Mixolab 2 had already provided Puratos several benefits through improved productivity, consistency, waste reduction, and quality control time savings. According to Bacanac, the company expects similar outcomes with the Mixolab 300 but applied to the patisserie sector.
“By understanding batter characteristics more deeply with the Mixolab 300, we can accelerate our time-tomarket for new products while supporting customers with unique services,” says Bacanac.
Mixolab 300 is not just a lab instrument for Puratos, it is an essential tool that strengthens their competitive advantage by deepening scientific understanding and translating that knowledge into customer value. As Puratos’ R&D team emphasized: “Once you understand what the machine is capable of, the benefits easily overcome the investment.”
RESHAPING PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT & QUALITY CONTROL WITH POWERFUL DATA
The case of Puratos and the Mixolab 300 illustrates how innovation in food science tools can reshape product
development, quality control, and customer service in the baking and patisserie sectors. Through its pioneering
work on the Mixolab 300, Puratos is:
- Advancing batter analysis with customized testing protocols.
- Accelerating product innovation by reducing time to-market.
- Delivering unique value to customers through data-driven insights.
Most importantly, the company demonstrates that with the right combination of scientific curiosity, collaborative teamwork, and reliable instrumentation, the future of bakery and patisserie innovation is bright.
