ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 10 -- United States Patent no. 12,408,675, issued on Sept. 9, was assigned to General Mills Inc. (Minneapolis).
"Apparatus and method for producing scored dough pieces" was invented by Steven J. Cox (Long Lake, Minn.), Kara M. Hobart (New Hope, Minn.) and Todd A. Rasmussen (Scandia, Minn.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Frozen un-proofed dough pieces are produced by cutting a dough sheet into strips and producing a score through an upper skin of each strip with at least one blunt deformation tool prior to freezing. The un-proofed dough pieces are formed by mass production, with an un-proofed dough sheet being cut to form dough strips which are then cut into the un-proofe...