I just wanted to ask a couple of quick questions regarding dough being rolled through dough rollers.
My regular (white baker’s flour) dough, cracks when rolled through the machine at a thin setting. But it only cracks on the trailing edge (the last section to pass through the roller). I have tried using more liquid (as much as the dough can hold) but nothing changes. Can you suugest a solution to this niggling problem?
Also, this problem is amplified when rolling wholemeal dough; all the edges crack.
I’m trying to understand “cracking”. It almost sounds like you’re letting the dough rise without a covering, giving it a hard skin on top. This is how Little Caesars did it when I worked there, though I don’t recommend it at all. But if this is what you’re doing, you need to push the dough ball down to flatten it out and move the “skin” more toward the middle of the ball.
If it’s actually tearing, you can try letting the dough warm up some before rolling out or roll out thicker then adjust the machine to the thinner setting. This method requires multiple passes through the sheeter and adjustments, which can be time-consuming.
If the dough is only tearing at the trailing edge as it goes through the sheeter, then I would be looking at insufficient fermentation, use of too low of a protein content flour, or possibly lack of oil/lubricant in the dough formula as being possible causes. With respect to the whole-meal/whole-wheat dough, the most common problem here is low dough absorption due to not using a “soaker” to pre-hydrate the whole-meal flour. With out knowing more about your dough formula and dough management process, it’s hard to be much more specific.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor