[LEFT]I pre-stretch about 100 shells on a friday and put clear garbage bags over them to keep them fresh. We sauce and cheese as needed. Does anyone pre sauce and cheese and if so how long of a shelf life once sauced and cheesed?
TIA
Denny
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Denny;
You really need to be very careful when you pre-sauce your skins, it’s possible (probable if you add water to your sauce) that separation of water from the sauce (syneresis) will take place and that water can enter into the dough setting the stage for the development of a “dreaded gum line” during baking. A good way to diminish the probability of this occurring is to very lightly brush the skins with oil prior to saucing. Also if you add cheese to the skins you will probably need to keep them refrigerated (you didn’t mention if you were refrigerating the pre-sauced skins or not, but assuming you are this would not create any additional problems). Additionally, it’s always good to keep in mind that once you pre-sauce and/or cheese a skin it is all but impossible to further stretch or manipulate the skin if it should exhibit shrinkage/snap-back during the holding period. This is easily addressed by making sure the dough skin is fully relaxed at the time of opening. If you are putting the skins on screens for holding be sure to watch for the dough beginning to flow into the screen openings. There are two main ways to address this if you experience it, 1) reduce the dough absorption until the dough is firm enough to resist flowing into the screen openings. 2) remove the dough skin from the screen that it was stored on and bake on a different screen, or just release the dough from the screen and replace it back on the screen for baking. This places the the dough out of register of where it was flowing into the screen so it doesn’t bake into the screen openings. Remember, the more weight that you put on top of the dough skin, the greater the possibility of this happening (if you’re using screens).
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor