TITLE: PROCESS FOR MAKING CORRUGATED DOUGH SHEETS, PARTICULARLY FOR PREPARING LASAGNA

DESCRIPTION

The present invention relates to a process for making corrugated dough sheets, particularly for preparing lasagna.

One prior art process is disclosed in US 4,515,817 in which a sheet of fresh dough is prepared, and precooked by immersion in hot water at 100 ⁰ C for about 2-3 minutes depending on the thickness and quality of the sheet.

Then the precooked sheet is conveyed to a forming station for imparting corrugations to the sheet.

Such forming station includes two crossbar- carrying conveyor belts in spaced superimposed relationship; the crossbars on the upper belt are offset from those of the lower belt and penetrate the gaps defined by adjacent crossbars thereby pressing upon the dough introduced between the two belts . Then, the sheet of dough is cut to size and dried to 5-6% residual moisture content.

The water-precooked sheet has been found to be prone to tearing as it passes through the forming station, also due to local crossbar pressure, which results in a high scrap rate.

In view of obviating the above drawback, the forming arrangement has been replaced by a press arrangement, which also operates on precooked dough.

Such arrangement eliminates the scrap rate problem but requires complex and costly maintenance and increases the cost of the whole system, thereby increasing payback costs which influence on the final cost of pasta.

Furthermore, since the press has a well-defined size, sheets of well-defined sizes can be only obtained.

The object of the present invention is to obviate the above drawbacks by particularly providing a very simple process that involves low operating costs and essentially no manufacturing scrap.

One advantage of the process of the invention consists in that it is suitable for use with any pasta type.

Features and advantages will be better explained in the description of the process, to be taken with reference to the drawing, in which:

• Figure 1 is a schematic view of the process and its sequences;

• Figure 2 is a schematic view of a variant embodiment of process and its varied sequences ;

Referring to the Figures, the process provides direct treatment of the fresh dough sheet 1 coming from the manufacturing machine 2 , using a very simple forming or corrugating device 3 composed of two powered counter-rotating toothed rollers 4 which are in mutually spaced relationship to allow the dough to pass therebetween while exerting instantaneous pressure thereon to impart folds or corrugations with a constant pitch.

The dough discharged from the rollers is laid upon a belt conveyor 5 which is fed at the same tangential velocity as the two toothed rollers 4 , so that no stretching stress is applied to the sheet as it passes from the rollers to the belt conveyor.

A steam precooking step follows; in this precooking step, the folds are maintained, because no immersion in water is provided.

Furthermore, during the precooking step, the dough still lies on a conveyor, which prevents the sheet from being bent or otherwise deformed.

At the exit of the precooking chamber, the sheet is cut to size.

The cutting step is carried out using well-known means 7.

In the next step, the corrugated sheets are dried using conventional pasta dryer 8.

As shown by the description of the process, the novelty consists in that the fresh dough is deformed by the pressure of the two toothed or corrugated rollers and in that precooking occurs only when the sheet has been deformed by steam and not by immersion in hot water .

The toothed rollers may have any shape whatever, to obtain corrugations of different types and pitches, and the toothed rollers may be easily excluded to obtain flat sheets, also for use for lasagna or other pasta types.

The pasta cutting step may be also carried out before the steam precooking step.

According to a possible variant to the process as shown in Figure 2, the shaped pasta passes from the belt conveyor 5 to a pre-drying chamber 9 before being transferred to the final drying station.