Continuous high-speed cooking and cooling method using pre-heated

Abstract

A method and system for continuous high-speed commercial cooking and cooling using pre-heated dough ingredients for making products such as tortillas, provides predetermined specific heating patterns in an infrared cooking sequence which assures consistent product characteristics. Dough blanks formed of pre-heated ingredients are conveyed past predetermined sequences of infrared burners within an oven along a series of paths to sequentially expose alternate sides of the pre-heated ingredients to intensive radiant heating patterns each of decreasing heat intensity and of predetermined short time duration. Conveyors within the oven are synchronized to maintain blank spacing similar throughout the cooking process and turnaround chute means reverse and transfer blanks from one conveyor to another for alternatively exposing opposite sides of the articles to the radiant heaters. Burner cooling and fume exhaust is obtained by introducing air near the center of the oven and discharging it at the oven ends. Ignition of gas burners and flame sensing is accomplished through full burning pilot tube means extending the length of each bank of radiant heating burners. A subsequent high velocity and lengthy travel of the cooked tortillas while they are being individually exposed to ambient air serves to cool the tortillas and to permit escape of any residual internal free moisture, thereby avoiding the subsequent release of moisture or softening of the cooked and attractively browned surface skin layers for enabling stacking without sticking together.