Senior Design Expo

The final presentation for Mechanical Engineering seniors is the Senior Design Expo.  On this day all senior projects are presented to judges from various positions in the Engineering community.  The team was ready to present our baking successes and final design to the Columbia Engineering faculty and students.  

Dough Boyz with Bake³⁶⁰

Judges were allowed to taste samples of pumpkin bread, chocolate bread, and soft pretzel that had been baked in the last few days.

Andrea presenting samples to Judges

While not required, a good way of presenting a summary of the senior design process, from concept to results, is via powerpoint poster.  This allows the judges to obtain a brief visual overview before talking to the group.

The team had a terrific time discussing the journey that was our senior design project with the various judges and letting them get a taste of the future of baking. 

Testing Round 2: Soft Pretzels

After machining longer prongs, we decided to test again with a new type of dough. 

Soft pretzel dough is boiled in a mixture of baking soda and water prior to baking. This additional step gives it an extra firm structure and forms a slight crust. With this additional support, we hoped that a sufficient crust would form to support the inner portions of the dough as it finished baking. 

Thankfully, this proved to be true and we got our first fully cooked baked good! The total baking time for a 3" sphere of pretzel dough was about twice that of the expected time when cooking on a traditional baking sheet. This is likely because the baking is done almost entirely by convection rather than the conduction that occurs through a metal baking sheet. 

We achieved the desired shape and the 360° crust, but we also learned that there are many things to be altered to make the device more user friendly and improve the food quality. 

Because it is difficult to remove the prongs from the inner ring the dough was formed around the prongs rather than skewering it through a perfect sphere. This caused the imperfections in the dough seen below. We hope to alter the prong attachment to use set screws which will allow easier placement and removal of dough. 

While there are more improvements in the works, we were certainly happy to take a victory lap around the shop letting Mohammad and Ottman be our taste testers to thank them for all their help.