JPS5823051B2 - Method of manufacturing rice crackers - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a method for producing rice crackers, and particularly to an improvement in a method for puffing rice crackers.

In recent years, rice crackers such as rice crackers, okaki (rice crackers), and arare (rice crackers) made primarily from non-glutinous rice or glutinous rice have been required to have improved quality in terms of taste, appearance, and softness.

Also, products with thick meat are becoming popular.

The method of manufacturing these rice crackers involves steaming, crushing, and kneading rice to make a uniformly viscous dough, which is then shaped into a predetermined shape.
It is cut to size, molded, dried, and heated to expand.

Conventional puffing methods involve only external heating using electric heat, gas combustion heat, infrared rays, etc., but in this case, only the outer periphery of the dough is burned and puffed, creating a cavity inside, or the outer periphery of the dough is Since it is puffed and dried while it is raw, it has a disadvantage that it is difficult for heat to be transmitted to the inside of the dough, so the inside of the dough cannot be sufficiently puffed.

Furthermore, a method of pre-drying and then high-frequency heating is also known, as shown in Japanese Patent Publication No. 46-15665. It has the following drawbacks and is not practical.

In other words, if the strength of the high-frequency power is not appropriately selected during the dough swelling process, the dough will not be puffed uniformly and will curve into an arched shape, or only one portion will puff up excessively, resulting in large deformation and quality deterioration.

In order to prevent this, it is necessary to apply high frequency power while pressing the fabric from both sides, which is undesirable because it complicates the device, increases the cost of the device, and increases the number of failure factors.

The present invention provides a method for producing rice crackers that includes a puffing treatment method that eliminates the drawbacks of the conventional methods and provides good quality.

The present invention is based on the method previously proposed (Japanese Patent Application No. 89233/1989).
Unlike the above, this method is based on the discovery of optimal conditions for good puffing of rice crackers using only microwave power.

In other words, glutinous rice is the main raw material, and the dough is steamed, crushed, kneaded, cut into a predetermined shape, and then processed without pre-drying.
The fabric was placed in a 50 MHz microwave irradiation furnace, and the irradiation power density per unit weight of the fabric was 2 to LOW/gr.
The fabric is expanded from within by irradiating it with microwave power in the range of (watts/grams).

Next, in order to brown the surface of the expanded product, it is transferred to a heating furnace equipped with an external heating source, where it is finished with slight dark spots.

It is also possible to produce the above microwave heating expansion and burnt area using a device in which each heating furnace is arranged in series so that continuous processing can be performed, and a conveyor carrying the dough is passed through the heating furnaces. .

Next, the results of basic experiments on microwave heating expansion are shown in the table (
1), but in the case of experiment number (1), that is, when the power density was 11.5 W/gr, the irradiation power density per unit weight of the fabric was too high, causing local bulges. In the case of experiment number (7), that is, when the irradiation power density was 1.7 W/gr, sufficient swelling did not occur because the irradiation power density was small. It was defective because it was baked in a burnt state.

However, in the case of experiment numbers (2), (3)... (6), that is, in the range of irradiation power density 2 ~]-oW/gr...
As a result, we were able to obtain a product of good quality with no local swelling.

As a result of an experiment with treated fabric moisture of 10% and 25%, it was confirmed that good quality products could be obtained with the same irradiation power density as shown in Table y (1), although there were some differences in irradiation time. It was done.

According to the manufacturing method of the present invention, in which dough is puffed through the steps described above, the dough is heated from inside using microwave power and water is pushed out to the surface, while the dough is softened and puffed.

At the same time, as the moisture moves, the portion of the fabric that has good absorption of microwave power due to moisture also moves from the inside of the fabric to the surface, so that the fabric also softens and expands from the inside toward the surface.

Therefore, the entire dough is uniformly expanded, and water evaporates gradually from the surface, so a high-quality product can be obtained without creating any internal cavities.

The swelling rate is also 2 to 3 times higher than that of the external heating method.

Furthermore, the irradiation power density per unit weight of the fabric is 2 to 1. oW
If it is set within the range of /gr, the fabric will not crack, so there is no need to mechanically press the fabric from both sides to prevent it from deforming, and the device structure will be simplified.

In addition to the above examples, there are also those made from non-glutinous rice,
The same thing can be said for dough containing other starches.

Furthermore, after the product has been expanded and has become a finished product, it is also possible to reduce the irradiation power density per unit weight to create burnt marks on the surface of the spear.

Note that microwave heating causes a dielectric heating phenomenon with microwaves having a frequency of 300 ME (Z or higher).

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A method for producing rice crackers in which rice grains are made into a viscous homogeneous material, and a dough formed from the rice is irradiated with microwave power to puff it up, wherein the irradiation power density of the microwave power per unit weight of the dough is about 2. A method for producing rice crackers, characterized in that puffing is carried out at ~10 w/gr.