Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Processes – Molding – casting – or shaping
Patent
1997-05-23
2000-11-07
Nessler, Cynthia L.
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Processes
Molding, casting, or shaping
425 97, 4251311, 425462, 26417318, 99352, 99353, B29C 4704, A23C 1164
Patent
active
06143342&
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention comprises apparatus and methods for making complexly patterned multicolored extruded food products. More particularly, the present invention relates to apparatus and methods for reducing a large cross sectional area complexly patterned food extrudate to a smaller area while maintaining the complex pattern, to apparatus and methods for adjusting flow of plastic extrudable food product, and to a manifold for making multiple extrudates formed of plastic extrudable food product and having uniformity of flow.
BACKGROUND
Food products such as Ready-To-Eat ("R-T-E") cereals and snack products vary widely in composition, shape, color, flavor, texture, etc. Such products can include both puffed and unpuffed varieties. One attractive feature is their appearance which can include specific attributes such as shape and coloration. Especially attractive are products having a complex but organized pattern of coloration, shape and/or complex shape.
A wide variety of techniques are known to provide complexly shaped products such as rings, stars, letters, figures, etc. Problems generally include how to provide consistently the desired degree of shape detail or resolution in the finished pieces. Similarly, for colored products, a problem is how to consistently provide a fine level of detail. This problem of imparting a fine level of detail is particularly difficult in the provision of complexly patterned R-T-E cereals due to their generally smaller size. The problem is even more severe for puffed R-T-E cereal products due to the very tiny size of the pellets that are expanded to form the finished products. Of course, the pellets must contain and retain the complex pattern.
In particular, it would be desirable to prepare puffed R-T-E cereals having a shape and color pattern reminiscent of various sports balls such as baseballs, footballs, basketballs and soccer balls, such as are disclosed in 1) U.S. Design Pat. No. D373671, issued Sep. 17, 1996, 2) U.S. Design Pat. No. D384785, issued Oct. 14, 1997, 3) U.S. Design Pat. No. D368791, issued Apr. 16, 1996, and 4) U.S. Design Pat. No. D372352, issued Aug. 6, 1996 respectively, each of which are incorporated herein by reference. Such products are characterized in part by high degrees of resolution such as by line features (such as to indicate traditional sticking patterns) 1 mm> in thickness and even 0.5 mm>. Providing a cereal pellet which upon puffing provides a puffed R-T-E cereal exhibiting such a fineness of detail is a difficult problem to overcome.
Line colored or externally striped food products such as R-T-E cereals as well as apparatus and methods for their preparation are described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,858,217 entitled Cereal Product With Striped Effect and Method of Making Same (issued Oct. 28, 1958 to J. O. Benson) and which is incorporated herein by reference. The '217 patent describes an extrudate extruder having a color injecting die insert for making a complexly patterned extrudate. However, the extrudate is directly extruded without any reduction in its cross sectional area. Also, the method appears to be limited to producing only flakes in a simple pattern of generally parallel more or less straight lines. The method is not capable of generating a direct expanded cereal or snack (i.e., expanded directly from the extruder) having a line detail of such a degree of fineness.
An improvement or modification in the technique for providing a line colored cereal based snack piece is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,447,931 (issued Jun. 3, 1969 also to Benson et al.) entitled Process For Preparing a Puffed, Concave Shaped Cereal Product. More particularly, the '931 patent describes a process for making a cup flower shaped R-T-E cereal piece having a complex line pattern. The process involves extruding a plurality of rope dough filaments which are pressed together to form a column or rope without a material decrease in the cross section which is then combined under conditions such that no puffing occurs. The composite stra
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Good housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook, 1989, Element A Slice Of Bread, p. 433
Huberg Peter A.
Tolson Scott A.
Weinstein James N.
General Mills Inc.
Kamrath Alan D.
Nessler Cynthia L.
O'Toole John A.
Taylor Douglas J.
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