I am having a problem with the final temperature of my calzones. I am getting a final temp of 93 degrees on the inside of the calzone. I am thinking my time/temp may be off. I am set at 490 degrees for 5:30 does that sound okay. My pizzas are coming out fine, hoagies could use a slight bump in temp. I was thinking a longer cook time at a lower temp might be the solution. Any help would be appreciated
When we cook strombolis & calzones (conveyor), we put a blank screen behind the item, and that allows some room, when we’re busy, to push it back a bit…
Make sure you have enough air vents in the dough as well…
I am slicing four vents in the top of the calzone before it runs through the oven. we are also having a problem with the amount of moisture the calzone has after cooking (ricotta cheese &sauce are the only wet items used. As for pushing it back into the oven i dont think that will bring it up to temp from 93 degrees
Hi mrschleg
Some operators heat all ingredients except cheese in a microwave before putting them in the Calzone. That facilitates getting the product to the proper temperature in a conveyor oven.
George Mills
You don’t mention the type or brand of oven…not sure if that’s important…I’m assuming its a conveyor…
I cook my pies at 460 for 8.5 minutes…
I also cut at least twice as many slts as you do…
We also build the cal/zones so the ricotta/cheese faces up, closest to the slits…
We prob end up cooking ours for 10 minutes & the cheese oozes out of the slits…
We don’t brush the crust with oil prior to baking, but after it leaves the oven…
We use a 7 minute cook time. Same as pizza. No issues.
Thanks for all the suggestions ill give them a try and see what happens.
@patriots… just curious how many ovens are you operating at a time? It seems like 8.5 minutes would slow down the kitchen (having a backlog for food to enter the oven.) On the other end it seems like the oven would be very easy to run during peak times.
@bode… What temp are you cooking at?
Slowing down the conveyor speed increases the quality of the bake and helps make my pizza stand out from the mass produced pies/crap out there…I have 2 ovens…at no time do we get back logged…and we can do some volume…
We currently cook at 478 for 6:25
I agree 100% that slower cooking makes a better product. We used to be at 450 for 7 mins and with the amount of volume there was a lot of pressure to cook faster which i did not agree with (quality not quantity). After a lot of experimentation i found the time and temp that made the best product and then did the math to figure out my degrees per second this way i was able to shorten the time and raise the temp accordingly to try and keep the product cooking close to the same as it was with longer time less temp. I believe we have it about as fast as we can get without sacrificing too much quality.
We have two wide belts that can take 16" pies side by side (would take bigger with no problem) so we can run over 100 pies per hour at 7 minutes.
okay so i have tried more vents (10) and i have also changed how i add toppings. Previously i was adding 4 oz cheese, 3 oz sauce, 2 oz ricotta, and guessing on the topping amounts. This is also using a 10 oz dough ball stretched onto a 12" screen. Now i put 2 oz cheese, 3 oz sauce, 2 oz ricotta, and 1 oz all toppings with a maximum amount of 3 toppings, I then top with 2 oz additional cheese. same size dough ball. Anybody see anything i’m doing wrong. my internal temp is still below 100. i am using a lincoln 1050 oven at 5:30 and 490 degrees
mrschleg,
imho, you’ve got way too much in the calzone. Cut everything by 60% and you should be fine. Good luck.
As I said b4…increase the cook time…yours is way to short…
If i figured my numbers right in order to cook at 5:30 you need to be at a temp of roughly 546 degrees… i dont think that you will get a great product at that time and temperature.
If your going to cook at 490 try a time of 6:10
We really like the results of longer cook times. We set the ovens for 7 minutes and adjust the temp setting to get the result we want.
when your settin the time how do you do it
is it from time front of the pizza goes in til the front of the pizza starts coming out the back of the oven
or
front of pizza hitting the oven til the whole pizza comes out at the end
One specific spot on the oven, in and out
Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk
Believe I always did it as the minute that leading edge of the screen entered the chamber until the minute that leading edge exited the chamber.
That is a REALLY short cook time. And the temp isn’t really that high, either…
im at 6:20 @480 degrees from time front of pizza goes in til the whole pizza is out the oven… does that sound about right
i also have a 40” chamber
We used to make calzones all the time in the air impingement ovens when I did the AIB Pizza Seminar. 485F for 6.5-minutes (leading edge in and trailing edge out). We used a lot less filling than what was originally described with total cheese at 3-ounces and only 2-ounces of sauce, then meat and vegetables. We baked the calzones on a screen and the inside of the calzone was so hot you couldn’t eat it right out of the oven. For vents we cut four slits across the top along the length of the calzone. The size was 12-inches and we used 10-ounces of dough to make the calzones. My experience is that you cannot use much cheese in making a calzone unless you are prepared to bake it differently from your pizzas. Our goal was to always bake the same as our pizzas whenever possible. If you plan on doing a lot of calzones and pizza I’d recommend getting a split conveyor so you can have two different baking times simultaneously through the same baking chamber.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor