Kneading machine for food products, comprising:
- a kneading bowl, defining a channel having a loading area for the product to be kneaded and an unloading area for the kneaded product,
- a plurality of kneading tools arranged in said channel and rotatable around axes which are substantially vertical, and
- means for advancing the product in said channel from said loading area to said unloading area, wherein:
- said bowl is a circular bowl and said channel is an endless channel defined within said bowl, said channel having a bottom wall, an outer circumferential wall and an inner circumferential wall;
- said kneading tools are distributed along the endless channel and are rotatably supported around their respective axes by a supporting structure,
- said supporting structure is rotatably mounted, relative to the bowl, around the central axis of the bowl, so that the kneading tools, beside rotating around their axes, are all moved simultaneously, with respect to said endless channel,
- said supporting structure also carries channel obstructing walls each projecting within said channel behind a respective kneading tool and movable, with respect to the channel, together with the kneading tools, to define a kneading chamber, associated with each kneading tool, each kneading chamber being substantially isolated from the remainder of the channel, each chamber being filled with a batch of product to be kneaded when each chamber passes by the unloading area, after the product has travelled along the endless channel,
- and wherein:
- each kneading tool has a theoretical enveloping cylinder which is substantially tangent to said outer circumferential wall and said inner circumferential wall and has its lower end adjacent to the bottom wall of the bowl,
- said obstructing walls are each constituted by a substantially curved wall located at the rear of the respective kneading tool relative to the direction of movement of the kneading tool along the endless channel and surrounding at least partially coaxially the rear portion of the theoretical enveloping cylinder of each respective kneading tool so as to cooperate with the kneading tool in the kneading action.