JPH0534935B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial Field of Application] The present invention relates to a method for producing rice crackers, and particularly to an improved method for preheating rice cracker dough.

[Conventional technology]

Conventional methods for mechanically producing rice crackers continuously include placing rice cracker dough on a belt conveyor that passes through a long continuous baking kiln, and heating it continuously with gas burners from above and below at the same time to color and bake it. was.

However, with this conventional method, since the baking time is long, the rice cracker dough may develop bubbles (localized swelling caused by blisters in the dough), causing it to warp, lose its shape, and not be finished flat. It had drawbacks such as not being able to be hard-baked. Therefore, in order to shorten the baking time, increase the puffing rate, and make the puffing uniform, a method was developed that uses high frequencies to make rice crackers. As a means of producing rice crackers using high frequency heating, for example, the method described in Japanese Patent Publication No. 15665/1986 is known, and this method uses rice grains as the main ingredient of puffed rice crackers in the presence of water. In, heating,
Pulverize and knead to obtain a viscous, uniform material with a gelatinization degree of 60% or more. After molding this into an appropriately large size, preheat and dry it to a moisture content of 10 to 20%. Then, this pre-dried material is subjected to high-frequency heating. heat from the inside, expand it and remove moisture 3
The technical idea is to heat it until it becomes less than %. Furthermore, for the same purpose, a method described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 42064/1983 was also developed.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

These conventional techniques that use high-frequency heating to bake dough can achieve a desired degree of puffiness in a short time, but are inferior to external heating methods that use electric heat, gas, etc. in terms of flavor, and are particularly poor in finish. The product had a ``flouriness'' and lacked the aromatic flavor characteristic of rice crackers.

Therefore, the purpose of the present invention is to achieve a desired degree of expansion in a short time without losing flavor even when high-frequency heating is applied, to easily produce cracked rice crackers, and to shorten the preheating time. shall be.

[Means to solve the problem]

The present invention has been made to achieve the above object, and its gist is to provide a method for producing rice crackers by preheating rice cracker dough, expanding and baking it, and then coloring and baking it. The fabric is subjected to external heat treatment,
Subsequently, high frequency heating and hot air or cold air are added to preheat.

[Effect]

When preheating the dough in this way, the dough is first subjected to external heat treatment to soften the dough surface and form a thin skin, and then when high-frequency heating and hot air are subsequently applied, the temperature on the dough surface and inside is uniform. Therefore, the water content distribution throughout the dough can be made uniform, and therefore the whole dough can be uniformly softened. This effect was extremely difficult to achieve with conventional methods that used only external heat as a preheating means. When this soft dough is puffed and baked, it is possible to obtain rice crackers of good quality that are puffed to a uniform thickness without causing any puffiness or crusting.

Furthermore, when high-frequency heating and cold air are applied at the same time after external heat treatment, only the surface of the dough is cooled, making it possible to bake a special type of rice cracker called cracked rice crackers, in which fine cracks appear on the surface of the dough.

〔Example〕

A rice cracker baking apparatus configured to carry out the present invention will be described below.

As shown in Figures 1 and 2, a driven roller 2 on the inlet side and a driving roller 1 on the outlet side are provided, and between these rollers 1 and 2 is made an endless wire mesh made of stainless steel with a width of about 910 mm. Belt 3 was suspended.
Note that reference numeral 4 in the figure is a drive source for rotating the drive roller 1. Then, the rice cracker dough is transferred from the right hand direction to the left hand direction in the figure by a belt conveyor consisting of rollers 1 and 2, a belt 3, and a drive source 4, and along the transfer direction, an external heat treatment means 10 and a high frequency heating section 20 , a swelling kiln section 30, and a coloring kiln section 40 are provided in this order. Furthermore, an upper belt conveyor 5 is provided above the above-mentioned belt 3 from the swelling kiln section 30 to the coloring kiln section 40, and the belt of this upper belt conveyor 5 is also connected to the above-mentioned belt 3.
It is configured in the same way. The external heat treatment means 10 and the high-frequency heating section 20 are devices that preheat the rice cracker dough, and are collectively referred to as a preheating oven section 100.

The external heat treatment means 10 has a large number of air supply holes 1.
1 is disposed below the belt 3, and while hot or cold air is blown onto the rice cracker dough from the air supply hole 11, the dough is softened by a gas burner 10A.
That is, the surface of the dough is softened in the external heat treatment means 10 to form a thin skin. gas burner 10
A is arranged above and below the belt 3, and both the upper and lower flames are configured to be movable up and down.

Although not shown, the high-frequency heating section 20 is equipped with two high-frequency heating machines above the belt 3, and a blow hole is provided below the belt 3 so as to face these high-frequency heaters. Either hot air or cold air can be selectively sent to this ventilation hole from an external ventilation source. Moreover, high frequency waves for heating are guided to the high frequency heating machine via a waveguide 28 from a high frequency generator installed outside.

Note that both the external heat treatment means 10 and the expansion oven section 30 are configured so that air from an air source can be blown out from air supply holes 11 and 33. Furthermore, filter zones 5 are provided between the external heat treatment means 10 and the high-frequency heating section 20, and between the high-frequency heating section 20 and the expansion oven section 30, respectively.
0.50 is formed. These filter zones 50, 50 are used when heating with high frequency.
This is to absorb 2450MHz radio waves to prevent them from leaking. The insides of the filter zones 50, 50 are configured to absorb radio waves by passing water through thin tubes, and are designed to be cooled against increases in internal temperature.

Note that the expansion oven section 30 and the coloring oven section 40 are also provided with gas burners, electric heaters, etc. 30A and 40A, respectively. A pressure roll 34 is provided inside the puffing oven section 30, and this roll presses the dough from above and below so that the dough does not warp or the like when it is puffed.

In addition, gas burners 10A, 30A, and 40A have 10 male collecting pipes for each kiln and for each upper and lower burner.
B, 10B, 30B, 30B, 40B, 40B, and each gas collecting pipe 10B, 10B, 30
At the entrance of B, 30B, 40B, 40B, mark R in Figure 2.
Install the gas compression regulator shown in the figure to prevent the pressure in the gas collecting pipe (10B, etc.) from fluctuating even if the source pressure of the gas supply fluctuates, and by adjusting the pressure, you can also adjust the firepower for each kiln. I made it easy.

Next, a method for producing hard-baked rice crackers by baking rice cracker dough using the apparatus configured as described above will be described. First, the dough is fed onto the belt 3, and the dough on the belt 3 is preheated in the preheating oven section 100 for about 2 to 6 minutes to soften it. At this time, in the high-frequency heating section 20, when hot air is sent from the air hole, the hot air and high-frequency heating work together to uniformly expand the dough and remove "flouriness". On the other hand, when sending cold air, the dough preheated by the burner 10A of the external heat treatment means 10 is cooled and subjected to high frequency heating, so that "cracks" occur in the dough and the inside of the dough is heated by high frequency heating, causing "cracks". It becomes easy to bake rice crackers, etc.

If the water content of the rice cracker dough becomes 25% or less in the above preheating stage, it will be difficult to dry it using external heat treatment using electric or gas heat, but if high-frequency heating and hot or cold air are applied to the rice cracker dough with a moisture content of 25% or less, Not only is drying possible, but the time can also be shortened. That is, in the high frequency heating section 20, the rice cracker dough has a moisture content of 12% in a short time.
As a result, the inside of the dough has been dried and pre-baked, and no "flouriness" remains. Next, in the puffing oven section 30, the dough is sandwiched between upper and lower belt conveyors and pressed between upper and lower presser rolls 34, 34, so that so-called sandwich baking is performed to uniformly increase the thickness of the dough. Note that the processing time in this swelling oven section 30 is about 1 to 2 minutes.

Next, the rice cracker dough is sent to the coloring kiln section 40, where it is heated to approx.
Process for 1.5-4 minutes. The total processing time for hard-baked rice crackers and the like was about 5 to 12 minutes, although it varied depending on the thickness of the dough.

Furthermore, according to the above-mentioned apparatus, hot air or cold air is blown onto the rice cracker dough in the preheating oven section 100 and the puffing oven section 30, which means that the rice cracker dough is exposed to outside air and baked, resulting in even more blowing. This suppresses the occurrence of

Furthermore, the preheating oven section 100 and the coloring oven section 40 each consist of a plurality of ovens, and appropriate intervals are provided between the ovens.

The colored kiln section 40 may be constructed by discontinuously arranging one kiln in which each kiln is provided with a gas burner 40A only on the upper side and one in which each kiln is provided with a gas burner 40A only on the lower surface, or all kilns may be arranged discontinuously. may be provided with gas burners 40A on the upper and lower sides.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, in this invention, not only high frequency heating is applied to the rice cracker dough during preheating, but also
It blows hot or cold air at the same time as high-frequency heating. Moreover, since the rice cracker dough is externally heat-treated before applying high-frequency heating, the surface of the dough is first softened to form a thin skin on the surface of the dough, and then the inside is heated by high-frequency heating, which allows the surface of the dough and the inside of the dough to be softened. The process can be uniformly softened, and the time previously required for preheating can be significantly shortened, resulting in a reduction in overall processing time. Furthermore, in the present invention, since high-frequency heating is performed successively after heating to a certain extent by external heat treatment, the high-frequency oscillation output may be relatively low (about 5 Kw).

Furthermore, if hot air is added during high-frequency heating, the temperature of the dough surface becomes the same as the internal temperature, and high-frequency heating can be applied to the inside of the dough without cooling the dough surface, so the surface and inside of the dough are even closer together. It becomes uniform and produces a good product without warping or blisters.

Additionally, when cold air is applied, fine cracks can be created in the crust on the surface of the dough, making it easier to bake special products.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is a side view of the device that realizes the present invention;
The figure is a plan view of FIG. 1. 1... Drive roller, 2... Followed roller, 3...
Belt, 4... Drive source, 5... Upper belt conveyor, 10... External heat treatment means, 11, 33... Air supply hole, 20... High frequency heating section, 28... Waveguide, 3
0... Puffing kiln section, 34... Presser roll, 40...
Colored kiln section, 50... Filter zone, 100...
Preheating kiln section, 10A, 30A, 40A... gas burner, 10B, 30B, 40B... gas collecting pipe.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. In a method of producing rice crackers by preheating rice cracker dough, expanding it, baking it, and then coloring it and baking it, the rice cracker dough is subjected to external heat treatment, and then preheated by adding high-frequency heating and hot air or cold air. Characteristic rice cracker manufacturing method.