Dough Ball Size for Cracker Crust?

I’m experimenting with Tom’s recipe from the PMQ Recipe Bank today. Anyone have suggestions for dough ball sizes? We have 10, 12, 14 and 16 inch screens.

Surely someone will offer a better researched answer, but in the meantime. I didn’t write it down anywhere, but am pretty sure I had a total of 22 ounces in my last batch. I rolled out a 14" cutter pan, and just measured the “scrap” I saved at 9 ounces, so…one could assume I ended with a 13 ounce skin for my pie. (If my memory is clear, which is questionable! )

Obviously the measuring and recording thing is something I have to start adhering to if I’m going to perform consistently with my money recipe!

For the cracker crust use a 14-ounce scaling weight for the 12-inch dough skins. This will give you with a minimum of scrap dough after the dough skin has been trimmed. Remember your Pi X r squared to calculate the other sizes. For example: 3.14 X 6 squared is 3.14 X 36 = 113 square inches in a 12-inch circle/pizzs skin. So 14 divided by 113 = 0.12389-ounces per square inch of surface area. Now, al lyou have to do is to multiply the surface area of any size pizza by 0.12389 to get the dough ball weight (in ounces) for that size pizza. Remember you will need to sheet the dough to a thickness of roughly 1/16 of an inch, no to exceed 1/8-inch in thickness. After sheeting the dough, I like to dock it and place it on a disk or pizza circle and trim it to size using a pizza wheel, then transfer it to a baking disk or prep peel for dressing.
The baking time will be on the long side, but the character of the crust is well worth the extra wait.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

Tom,

As a point of clarification, do the numbers you mentioned presuppose the use of a commercial sheeter or roller of some sort that will be able to produce the proper sized skin with minimal scrap? I know that some operators produce a large sheet from which skins are cut using a template or ring.

PN

Most operators today use one (1) dough ball to make one pizza skin without any scrap. When making something like a Chicago style thin, cracker crust, the dough must be processed through a sheeter/roller and trimmed to size, resulting in some scrap dough generation, typically to the tune of about 2-ounces for each dough skin produced.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor