Reducing bake time

Hi all, basically retired a few years ago so have not been around. Been asked by my GM to help out with increasing volume of ovens. Question… we sell a heavily topped pie, dual XLT 3270 split deck ovens, pies take 9 minutes avg. Some require “pushing back in” for another minute at least. Nothing wrong with ovens.
Have tried different config of fingers. Question is how can I reduce bake time? Currently set at 475deg. This produces (in my/customer opinion) the perfect golden brown crust and cheese. Not interested in any “white” pizzas…
Par bake crusts?
Any suggestions welcome.

Yeah, I know, maybe a silly question lol…

You can bake on a par-baked crust but that will require that you completely re-profile the bottom fingers, and then you will need to have an oven profiled just for making the par-bakes as getting a decent par-baked crust for this specific application takes a bit of finesse. Then the question comes up, will the new finger profiles bake all of your “other” non pizza items? With a 9+ minute baking time and getting the “perfect” pizza, it sounds like you might have the ovens maxed out for the type of pizzas you’re making. As you know, with a heavily topped pizza it isn’t the crust that’s the issue, it’s the top of the pizza, that’s where all of the time comes in. Assuming you have full open fingers across the entire top and full open or a modified finger configuration (to control crust color) across the bottom. That said, maybe it’s time to begin looking at one of the wider ovens. Since you already have XLT take a look at their new super wide belt oven, a wider belt option will not reduce the baking time but it will certainly allow you to bake more pizzas in a given period of time.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

As tom explained you probably can not up production of the existing ovens.

You might consider adding a third deck.

George Mills

If you make smaller pie (thinner), less toppings then the bake time goes down.

That is correct but you have then changed the identity of the pizza.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

1 Like