Antonelli Industrie Dolciarie has been using the system for the production of natural liquid yeast (consisting in two 2,300 kg tanks) supplied by Agriflex s.r.l. since September 2012.
Mr Nicola Antonelli, owner of the company along with his sons, kindly agreed to give us an interview and explained the benefits and advantages of the system for the production of natural liquid yeast supplied by Agriflex.

Conventional yeast was too “ropey”; it did not get stretchy, was little elastic and did not act on flour gluten. When the plant was closed, they had to call a yeast maker to check for proper yeast development. This represented a huge cost for the company.
Moreover, yeast was frozen and slow to start off, and gave a slightly acidic aftertaste.
Croissants had irregular shapes – they came out crooked – because dough viscoelasticity was incorrect, and it was impossible to cut perfect triangles and roll them up without a thick skin and external dark wood-like colour.

Many problems were solved by adopting Agriflex system for the production of natural liquid yeast. It considerably improved the whole production process. When kneading the dough, this is stretchy and elastic. Mixing and kneading is faster by 1 to 1.5 minutes.
Tests were conducted to compare natural liquid yeast and traditional yeast and it was found out that natural liquid yeast contains twice as much lactic acid as traditional yeast, thus ensuring better taste, no acidic aftertaste and consistently higher quality dough. With Agriflex system, the working cycle is set based on time rather than pH, which means that it can be run automatically, even when the plant is closed, with no intervention of the yeast maker.

The foremost advantage of this new technology concerns system automation that makes it accessible to everyone. The second main advantage is the stability of the final product which is always constant and always the same since all parameters such as pH and temperature are set from the operator panel with no intervention of the yeast maker.
Traditional processing was influenced by numerous variables such as temperature, air, the yeast maker himself and the adjustments proposed in order to ensure the yeast was always the same. All these elements meant that the yeast and, as a result, production were inconsistent. This is no longer the case thanks to Agriflex system for the production of natural liquid yeast. Any minor adjustments which are sometimes necessary – e.g. slight decrease of the pH value in case of extreme cold weather – are recorded by the automation system.