Method of increasing the visibility of discrete morsels contained within a baked food product

Abstract

Abstract A method of making a morsel-containing, baked food product that exhibits a high degree of morsel visibility on a preselected surface, which in the case of a ready-to-serve cookie is its top surface. The method includes the steps of forming a continuously-moving dough rope containing randomly-distributed morsels, followed by penetrating the continuously-moving dough rope with means that engage and transversely move a portion of the randomly-distributed morsels to a pre-selected, peripheral area of the dough rope that corresponds to the baked product's pre-selected surface where high morsel visibility is ultimately desired. Thereafter, the continuously-moving dough rope is cut into a series of individual dough preforms that are either immediately baked into the final baked product as in the case of a ready-to-serve cookie, or wrapped in a suitable wrapper and subsequently baked or further sliced and then baked by a consumer at home. In a particularly preferred method, the dough rope is laminated and comprised of one or more inner doughs surrounded by one or more outer doughs. Also disclosed are several embodiments of apparatus for performing the above-described method in a high-speed manufacturing setting. In one particularly preferred embodiment, one or more reciprocating pins are used to penetrate the continuously-moving dough rope to engage and transversely move a portion of the morsels contained therein to the pre-selected, peripheral area of the dough rope. In another particularly preferred embodiment, one or more disks are utilized.

Inventors

• 👤 Richard A. Brewer
• 👤 Robert H. Merk
• 👤 Gary J. Orndorff

Bibliographic Details