Scored pretzel bite apparatus and method

An automatic soft pretzel dough forming machine comprising:

• one or more disc cutters;
• one or more wheel cutters
• one or more cone rollers;
• one or more lateral cutting guillotines;
• a caustic bath
• an oven;
• and
• one or more conveyors that:
• convey one or more dough sheets to the one or more disc cutters that separate and trim a dough sheet into parallel dough strips,
• convey the parallel dough strips to the one or more wheel cutters that cut a series of transverse slots on one lateral side of each one of the one or more dough strips, each transverse slot terminating a proximal distance to the one lateral side and spaced so that at least one transverse slot is received in each eventual pretzel bite and extending beyond a midpoint of the respective dough strip,
• convey the one or more dough strips to the one or more cone rollers that rolling each one of the one or more transverse slotted dough strips into a respective rolled dough strip, exposing each transverse slot across the rolled dough strip,
• convey the rolled dough strip to the one or more lateral cutting guillotines that transversely cut each rolled dough strip into dough bites,
• convey the dough bites through a caustic bath that washes each dough bite in a caustic solution, and
• convey the washed dough bites through the oven that bakes the washed dough bite into a pretzel bite, wherein each transverse slot allows a volume of the pretzel bite to increase without being constrained by a pretzel skin formed around each transverse slot to aerate an interior of each pretzel bite.