Method for producing thin portions of pasta filata cheese
OwnerMarco M. Meyerinventor
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Abstract
A technique for producing sliced, shredded and/or diced cheese of the pasta filata type. The technique utilizes a plurality of rollers which reduce an extruded strand of cheese to a ribbon of the desired thickness. The rollers are heated and a spray of warm water is applied to the cheese to keep the ribbon plastic and pliable. The edges of the sheet are trimmed, and then the sheet is run through a brine tank or sprayed with a brine mixture to salt the sheet for the desired amount of time. Thereafter, the sheet is cooled and cut into any desired shaped to create an end product of controlled size and weight. The trimmings are returned to the extruder, reheated, and reused.
Claims21
A method for producing thin portions of cheese of the pasta filata type, said portions having a desired thickness and a predetermined quantity of cheese, said method comprising the steps of:
- placing the cheese in a heated, deformable state;
- forming an extended ribbon of the cheese moving in a direction away from the point of formation;
- successively applying pressure to the moving heated, deformable ribbon of cheese in a single direction normal to the direction of movement, thereby reducing the size of the ribbon in a dimension parallel to the direction of pressure application to a desired thickness while simultaneously increasing the dimension of the ribbon through free and unrestrained expansion in a dimension that is normal to the direction of pressure application and to the direction of movement, whereby said pressure application forms a flattened ribbon of cheese;
- and
- severing the flattened ribbon into portions having the predetermined quantity of cheese.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.