Anna´s Thins are baked at high speed. It only takes about seven minutes from dough to ready-packed cookies.
Dough-making
 |
 |
When mixing the ingredients, Anna’s bakers follow a recipe that is more than 70 years old. Nowadays, however, the bakery uses the latest technology, such as sugar and flour silos, and a syrup feed connected directly to the dough machine. Anna’s dough mixers can currently accommodate around 410 kilos of dough each. Once the dough is mixed, it has to be stored in a cool place for at least 20 hours to develop optimal flavour.
Rolling and cutting
In the old days this was a craft, even at Anna’s, but nowadays we use a special machine to roll and cut the dough. It has a maximum capacity of around 2,400 cookies/minute, which means a total of some 250,000 cookies an hour.
Baking
The baking trays used to be lifted into the oven by hand, but now there are steel conveyors that lead straight into the 35-metre-long hot-air oven. Before baking, which takes 4 minutes, the steel conveyor belt is greased with vegetable oil. When the cookies enter the oven, the temperature inside is around 300 degrees.
Cooling
Our cookies used to be cooled on trolleys that basically consisted of trays mounted on stands. Nowadays, we use a special cooling tunnel where the trays are sprayed with cold water from below while cool air circulates around above the cookies.
Packaging
Anna’s uses both machine and manual packaging. Our boxes are filled by machines that carefully insert the cookies into the different boxes. Tins and caterers’ packs, however, are hand-packed. Anna’s cookies are so thin and delicate that they cannot simply be vertically machine-fed into tins or larger packs.
Storage and delivery
In 2002, Anna’s built a larger warehouse adjacent to the bakery. On completion, the warehouse and its pallet stands will accommodate about 5,500 pallets.
In 2001, Anna’s delivered some 3,000 tonnes of cookies by road to wholesaler premises, ports and warehouses all over the world. This is equivalent to over 500 million cookies.
Dough-making
Dough for consumer sales is only manufactured three months a year, from October to December.
Making Anna’s Gingerbread Houses
 |
 |
