All biscuits, cookies and crackers are flour-based baked and shaped food products. They generally have some fat and sugar in their formulation. Changes in the ratio of flour, sugar, and fat have an impact on the type of biscuit, its production method, and its taste. However, most types of biscuits can also branch into a variety of biscuits, so the ratios are ranged. So recipe plays a major role in biscuit type.

However, we can also classify biscuit types based on the processing methods:

Sheeting and cutting

Mostly, sheeting and cutting are processing methods used for hard, developed doughs which are extensible. Most of these biscuit doughs are low or very low in fat and sugar. The doughs are sheeted into layers of uniform thickness first. Then the sheets of dough are passed to a series of gauge rolls to reduce the thickness step by step. These biscuits contain a number of crackers and semi-sweet biscuits.

               

Semi-sweet biscuits

               

Soda cracker

Laminating, sheeting and cutting

The doughs are firstly sheeted and folded many times before gauged to sheets for the cutting of raw biscuits. The laminating process develops a structure in the dough which is enhanced during baking. Many crackers are made by this method especially those for higher-end markets.

Rotary moulding

It’s the main method used for making soft dough pieces that are more or less crumbly, rich in fat and sugar. It has the great advantage that only one simple machine is needed to turn a mass of dough into raw biscuits. The mass of dough is pressed into mould cavities in a roller then raw biscuits are extracted and passed into the oven. This method is not suitable for doughs that are too soft or for doughs containing nuts, chocolate chips, and dried fruits.

Wire cutting

Softer doughs are made by the extruding method. This method is for cookies. The extrusions may be cut immediately by a reciprocating wire which is known as wire cutting. Alternatively, the extrusions can also be formed into continuous strips or bars that can be cut to the required length before or after baking.

               

Wire cutting

               

Depositing

Depositing

Depositing is another type of extrusion. Using this method, the dough is very soft, could be the softest which is more like a batter than dough. The depositing machine performs intermittent depositing through a row of nozzles mounted in the depositor's head. The depositor rises and falls to form pieces to be baked. The nozzles could rotate or swing to give interesting shapes to the raw cookies formed.

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