Cereals processing technology

Rice Chex Õ and Crispix Õ are made by using two pairs of shredding rolls.
Rice Chex Õ is made with rice as the sole cereal ingredient, while Crispix Õ is
made from rice and corn as the cereal components. The dough sheet formed
from the first pair of rolls is placed on a moving belt. The dough sheet from the
second pair of rolls is then slid on top of the first sheet on the same moving belt.
The layered sheets can be cut by one or two pairs of cutting rolls, which fuse a
thin line of the dough sheets into a solid mass at regular intervals to form a
continuous matrix of biscuits. The wet biscuits are transferred to a metal belt
moving through a gas-fired oven. The shredded rice cereals are toasted, cooled,
and broken apart from each other through a vibrator conveyor. Fortification of
the shredded rice cereal with vitamins and minerals is a common practice.
Packaging of the product is a very important step for protection from moisture
and atmospheric light changes.
5.10 Baby foods
Rice production 103
Rice in the form of rice flour or as granulated rice is used in the formulation of
many strained baby foods. Rice flour, glutinous rice flour, and rice polishings
are used in preparing baby foods. The largest use of rice in the baby food
industry is in the manufacture of precooked infant rice cereals.
5.10.1 Precooked rice cereal
The process for making precooked baby foods consists of preparing and cooking
a cereal slurry. The objective is to precook the rice and to convert the starch
from crystalline to amorphous form. The rice slurry is first precooked in water to
form a slurry and then treated with amylase enzyme to predigest the starch into
dextrin and oligosaccharides. The ingredients used in the formulation of baby
foods are rice flour, rice polishings, sugar, dibasic calcium phosphate, gycerol
monostearate (emulsifier), rice oil, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, or niacinmide.
The prepared rice slurry is dried with an atmospheric drum drier. The thickness
of the film on the drier surface, the spacing between the drums, the temperature
of the drum surface, the drum speed, and the flowing properties of the slurry are
controlled with the objective of making an easy-to-digest rice product. The
solids, drum speed, and the drum temperature are adjusted to obtain a finished
product of excellent quality. Packaging of the final product in selected
paperboard carton containers is common practice.
Some precooked rice cereals with strawberries or apples appear to be gaining
favorable consumer acceptance. Cereal ingredients, fruit, sugar, oil, vitamins,
and minerals are cooked, dried on an atmospheric drum drier, flaked, and
packaged. Because of the hygroscopicity of the fruit and sugar, fruit cereals
require moisture-proof packages. Some diastase enzymes can be used to lower
the liquid requirement for reconstitution. The temperature, time of digestion,
enzyme activity, and solid content must be controlled closely to obtain a