PLANO, TEXAS – Frito-Lay North America has filed for a patent that involves crisp bread snack food products based on traditional bread recipes around the world and a method for producing the products on a commercial processing line. Plano-based F.L.N.A. is a business unit of PepsiCo, Inc. The patent filing, published on Aug. 1, has the application number 20130196033.
Examples of crisp bread snack food products listed in the filing include Swedish oat bread, torta from Spain and challah from the Middle East.
“Traditional breads typically have a significant moisture content, which limits their shelf life,” the patent filing said. “The production of traditional breads involves significant preparation time and baking time. Because of the limited shelf life and time involved in preparing the breads, traditional breads are not preferred as a snack food product. Consequently, it would be desirable to adapt the traditional bread recipes for production on a commercial processing line to produce a variety of shelf stable snack food products that have substantially similar flavors to the traditional breads.”
The production method used by F.L.N.A. creates bread products that have a moisture content of about 1% to 8% and a thickness of about 2 millimeters to 14 millimeters. The products contain about 15% to 75% cereal flour, about 5% to 25% starches or starch-rich ingredients, about 0.5% to 15% proteins, about 0.5% to 5% flavoring ingredients, about 0.5% to 5% leavening agents, about 0.3% to 3% salt, about 2% to 15% sugar, about 2% to 25% fat ingredients, and about 0.5% to 5% fiber.
