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US 4,888,180 AGranted
A method of preparing grain cakes
AssigneeThe Quaker Oats Company
InventorRei-Young Wu
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AssigneeThe Quaker Oats Company
InventorRei-Young Wu
Estimating the term…
An improved grain cake, method and apparatus. In the prior art, rice cakes have been made by heating a predetermined quantity of rice grains in a hermetically sealed chamber at superatmospheric pressure and then expanding the heated rice grains while they are confined to the chamber by abruptly releasing the superatmospheric pressure such that the confined, expanded grains bond together to form a self-supporting mass. The improvement of this invention comprises pretreatment of cereal grains, including rice, wheat, rye, corn and the like, by steaming the cereal grains to bring them to an effective temperature to partially gelatinize the starch therein and to maintain the cereal grains at the effective temperature for an effective period of time to produce a desired degree of expansion when puffed in a conventional rice cake machine. The resulting grain cakes have increased expansion and reduced fragility over those made by prior art pretreatment methods.
In a method for making a puffed, cake-shaped food product by heating a predetermined quantity of cereal grains in a hermetically sealed chamber at superatmospheric pressure and then expanding the heated grains while they are confined to the chamber by abruptly releasing the superatmospheric pressure such that the confined, expanded grains bond together to form a self-supporting mass wherein the improvement comprises pretreatment of the cereal grains by steaming cereal grains to bring them to an effective temperature to partially gelatinize the starch therein and to maintain the cereal grains at the effective temperature for an effective period of time to produce a desired degree of expansion in the final product.
In a method for making a puffed, cake-shaped food product by heating a predetermined quantity of cereal grains in a hermetically sealed chamber at superatmospheric pressure and then expanding the heated grains while they are confined to the chamber by abruptly releasing the superatmospheric pressure such that the confined, expanded grains bond together to form a self-supporting mass wherein the improvement comprises pretreatment of the cereal grains by the steps of:
An industrial method for making a puffed, cake-like food product comprising highly expanded cereal grains comprising the steps of:
An industrial method for making a puffed, cake-like food product comprising highly expanded cereal grains comprising the steps of:
The method of claim 18 also comprising the step of adding water to the cereal grains prior to steaming to bring their moisture content into the range of about 14% to about 16%.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.