Steam corn flake processing involves expanding and softening grains through steam heat treatment, and then peeling and cracking these expanded grains with the mechanical pressure from a pair of counter-rotating roller pairs, to process the grains into thin slices of specified density.

The mechanism of steamed flake processing for grains is actually a gelatinization process, which breaks the hydrogen bonds of starch binding within the cells of tightly bound grain starches through gelatinization, thereby improving the digestibility of grain starches for animals.