Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Products per se – or processes of preparing or treating... – Basic ingredient is starch based batter – dough product – etc.
Reexamination Certificate
1999-11-01
2003-07-08
Cano, Milton I. (Department: 1761)
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Products per se, or processes of preparing or treating...
Basic ingredient is starch based batter, dough product, etc.
C426S549000, C426S094000, C426S553000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06589583
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to dough products, and methods of preparing the dough products. In particular, the invention relates to dough products comprising a chemical leavening system comprising a plurality of chemical leavening acids having different temperature ranges within which they are active as chemical leaveners. An unproofed frozen dough product comprising such chemical leavening system undergoes a staged rising upon heating to produce a cooked dough product with excellent visual and organoleptic properties, without requiring an intervening thawing or proofing step prior to cooking.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Freshly baked dough products, such as breads, pastries, Danishes and sweet rolls, are the object of high demand from the consuming public. These products are highly desired not only due to their taste and the dietary satisfaction that is achieved by consuming them, but also, because the preparation of such products, particularly within a home environment, can serve many useful and/or desirable functions. For example, the preparation of such dough products can serve to provide entertainment for those who enjoy cooking these items, a sense of satisfaction to those who enjoy the challenge of preparing such items, and furthermore, can create a comfortable, “homey” atmosphere by virtue of the aroma that is produced when these items are baked.
However, certain baked dough products can be difficult to produce, sometimes to such an extent that their production either in a home or commercial setting becomes prohibitively time consuming. Some dough products, for example, require extended periods of mixing and/or kneading which can not only be time consuming, but for some individuals, can be difficult to perform. Additionally, leavened dough products, i.e., those that comprise either yeast or chemical leavening systems in order to provide a final baked product with a desired baked specific volume or width to height ratio, often require lengthy “proofing” steps, i.e., wherein the dough is allowed to rise until double or triple in size. Depending on the desired final baked specific volume of the dough product, these proofing steps typically take from one to several hours to complete.
Several of these difficulties can be overcome by consumers and/or commercial institutions by utilizing pre-made dough products. That is, pre-mixed dough products are commercially available which obviate the need for mixing and kneading the dough. For example, frozen varieties of bread dough and dough for rolls, as well as refrigerated varieties of sweet rolls, Danishes, and pizza dough, are commercially available at most supermarkets. Although such products provide a viable, time-saving alternative to preparing these same items from scratch, these products can suffer from drawbacks that may make them suboptimal for use in some situations.
Such dough products, although more convenient in that mixing and kneading of the dough is typically not required, can still be undesirably time consuming and/or difficult to prepare. Frozen dough products, for example, generally require a thawing step and a proofing step before they can be baked. Thus, the preparation of these products, although easier, is still time consuming, by virtue of the lengthy amount of time required to thaw and/or proof these items prior to baking. Also, refrigerated dough products are often preproofed prior to packaging. As a result, the manufacture of these products incurs the inconvenience of accommodating the necessary proofing time into the manufacturing process, which may be undesirable in some applications. Additional manufacturing equipment, i.e., proofing cabinets, may also be necessary to perform such preproofing steps, thus necessitating that additional expense be incurred. Furthermore, the shipping and storage of preproofed refrigerated dough items can be problematic in that such items may require more delicate handling, stronger packaging and/or more storage space than their unproofed counterparts.
In efforts to provide dough products that are more easily and conveniently prepared, several attempts have been made to develop freezer-to-oven dough products, i.e., products that are capable of proceeding directly from the freezer to the oven without an intermediate thawing or proofing step. In one approach, described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,254,351 to de Boer et al and European Patent Application Nos. EP 0 542 353 A1 to Boode-Boissevain, EP 0 305 071 to Seneau, and EP 0 796 560 A1 to Karinthi, the dough product is “preproofed” before it is frozen. Then, when the dough product is to be baked, a proofing step is not required and the dough product may be placed directly in the oven or other cooking device.
These types of dough products, although more convenient for the end consumer, can provide an end product baked good that has less desirable textural and organoleptic properties due at least in part to the act of proofing the dough product prior to freezing. That is, when a leavened dough product is proofed or allowed to rise, a leavener reacts with another material in the dough to produce gas. The produced gas forms pockets throughout the dough and the formation of these pockets, in turn, causes the dough structure to expand. This expansion typically weakens the gluten structure of the dough, a weakness that is further exacerbated by the formation of ice crystals as the dough temperature reaches a temperature at which substantial amounts of water will freeze. Dough products with such a weakened gluten structure have a tendency to collapse upon baking.
Also as a result of the generally fragile gluten structure of pre-proofed products, such products can also be more difficult to manipulate and package than non-proofed dough products. That is, inasmuch as it is undesirable to disrupt or disturb the gluten structure that is formed upon proofing, the dough product must be handled carefully in order to preserve the proofed gluten structure. In commercial or manufacturing applications, the level of care necessary to preserve the structure may be difficult, if not impossible to attain, due, for example, to time constraints, the level of skill of the worker or the mechanical limitations of the processing equipment. Furthermore, preproofed frozen dough items are necessarily larger than their non-proofed counterparts, and thus the shipping and storage of such items requires more space, which can be costly for the shipper of such items, as well as inconvenient for the end-user.
In addition to the aforementioned efforts, other attempts have focused on the inclusion of particular types of leavening systems, rather than a preproofing step, in order to provide dough products which are more convenient for the end-user to prepare. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,589,207 to Larsen discloses a method of producing a freezer-to-oven dough product, wherein the disclosed dough comprises yeast and an amount of an amylase, which functions to provide the yeast with fermentable saccharides. However, although a certain amount of yeast is desirably included in many dough products due to the distinctive and desirable flavor that results from its inclusion, this approach, as well as others that provide dough products that employ only yeast as the leavening system, can result in the production of a suboptimal baked dough product in freezer-to-oven applications.
In particular, freezer-to-oven dough products that comprise yeast as the only leavening agent generally do not provide a baked dough product with the desired baked specific volume and/or organoleptic properties. This is at least partially due to the fact that these types of dough products are not proofed prior to baking, and thus, any and all desired expansion and structural development of the dough product must occur during baking, and in particular, in the early part of the bake cycle, before the dough reaches a temperature at which it begins to set. Also, since yeast has an optimal temperature range during which it produces substantial amounts of gas, i.e., from about 80° F. to about 90
Anderson Brian Robert
Hansen Laura M.
Lorence Matthew W.
Reinke Jeffrey D.
Cano Milton I.
Kagan Binder PLLC
Madsen Robert
The Pillsbury Company
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