Switched cheese brands and need help. New cheese has been browning faster. Crust isn’t baking as I like it to before cheese turns brown. Should I decrease oven temp and lengthen baking time a little…or vice versa? Currently baking at about 465 for 5 and 1/2 minutes.
While i dont know what ovens you use, Lincoln has told me that Temperature controls color, time controls doneness.
May I ask why you changed cheese?
Different cheeses bake differently. Personally I think its better to go with a cheese that can bake longer to give you a better crust. If you stick with the new cheese then yes, your option is to lower the temp and increase the time. This is not always an easy task, however, as sometimes this same cheese will still burn given the longer bake time.
Did you switch to a low-fat cheese from a whole milk? Its been a while but from what I can remember, low-fat burns faster than whole.
I switched from Burnett to Saputo for the main reason that one of my suppliers was giving me the Saputo for 0.71 less per pound compared to the Burnett. I tried both and actually preferred the taste of the Saputo and I have gotten good feedback on it. The only downside is the baking.
You have two options here, one, as you note, you can reduce the baking temperature (try 440F) and bake the pizzas a little longer, maybe adjust the bake time to 6.5-minutes and bench mark from there. Or, another approach would be to look into reprofiling your top finger configuration. I would start by closing off the first top finger and making it a radiant panel, thus reducing the air flow to the top of the pizza to control browning, but not detracting too greatly from the heating of the topping ingredients, so the overall bake time might not need to be altered. This can be a good approach if you are already running “petal to the metal” during your slam periods.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
I use a Doyon PIZ6 Jet Air Deck oven. No fingers. Tried lowering to 450 and using a 6 minute bake time with great results. Funny how that little difference is making all the difference. Thanks for your help guys. I’ll have to see if this fix holds up.