Urgent Troubleshooting - Baking Pizza in Impinger Conveyor Oven

Hi,

This is my first post on pmq and is very important for my new pizza venture.

Background:

I had been running a delco pizza store in New Delhi, India for the past 3 years. The dough was mixed, kneaded, balled and cold fermented for 14 hours following which a hand tossed pizza was baked in a gas deck oven on pizza stone at 270C/518F top and bottom temperature at 290C/554F. A 9 inch dough ball weighing at 170gms and Dough Composition as below:

Flour @ 12% Protein Content - 100%
Water - 58%
Salt - 2%
Sugar - 1%
Soyabean Oil - 4%
IDY - 0.2%

Current Situation;

I have set up a new pizza store in a different part of town, the store is ready to be launched but i am not able to get the pizzas baked right. Reason being that i am not able to calibrate the new pizza oven i have purchased and installed at this locationa and that too at a significant cost.

The oven is a Indian make impinger conveyor oven, gas fired single 18 inch width belt. the oven functions properly with bake temperature as high as 255C/495F and belt times from 3 mins to 10 minutes. The top and bottom air temperatures / air flow cannot be separately adjusted.

I am stuck by a peculiar problem wherein at a certain temperature and belt speed either the diced mozarella cheddar blend cheese and the toppings get baked perfectly and the crust browns but is undercooked or if i set the temperature and belt speed to match the crust cooking perfectly results in the cheese and topping completely burnt.

I arrived at two temperature settings (and matched belt speeds) wherein the cheese and topping bake perfectly. First being at 220C/428C for 6 minutes and other being at 250C/ 482F for 4.45 minutes. I further tried to align my dough to bake at these two settings but without any sucess. I have attemped at least 30 to 40 dough formulations varying in hydration levels, other ingredients, fermetation periods, dough ball temperatures while hand tossing/ stretching , etc but have not been able to get the crust baked right.

Have tried the other way round wherein I calibrated the oven setting to perfectly bake the crust as per dough formulation mentioned in the beginning. As such an oven setting the only way put was to try and cool the already refrigerated cheese and topping further by spraying a mist of ice cooled water but that is not a possibility in day to day operations.

It seems to me that I would have to resort to making pizza on a par baked crust which i surely want to avoid. I attempted it and was able to get a good pizza going. I stretched the pizza dough, put in on the pizza screen, docked a little, applied some sauce and baked the crust. The second time round added sauce, cheese and toppings and baked the pizza which was crispy and soft inside. Honestly i can align the coking process this way but would hate to do it as the single most important purpose to me of baking a fresh dough pizza would elude me and secondly that oven would seem a total waste of effort, time and money to me.

What do I do ? Need urgent help / guidance for sure so I post.

Thanks for reading.

Samar.

Hi Samar

You need to cut back on the top heat.
You can do that with a strip of metal inserted into the upper fingers to block some of the air holes.
It will take some experimenting but it can be done.

George mills

Hi, Thanks for the reply. It would work for the cheese and topping but would that not prevent dough borders in baking properly.

Your dough is mainly cooked from the bottom so I doubt you will see much change in the cook of your dough.

Paul is correct.
George Mills

Thanks. Let me attempt blocking a few vents and baking. Will revert with update in few hours. I do recall the installation guy telling me not to change the top and bottom air vent plates. Also, the air from the top does seem to be coming down with a lot more force as compared to below. I havea a very strong feeling that the plates were interchanged at assembly. Hope that is the case as it will solve most of the problem faced as of now. Will get to know in about 10 hours as it is midnight here.

Hi Samar:

Did you solve your problem?

George Mills

Hi,

The problem was with the oven, the motor / blower supplying air to the bottom vent plate was faulty and running at lesser rpm. It took a few days for the manufacturer to figure out and replace the motor. We made some pizzas today and are getting close to the . desired product, keeping my fingers crossed. Thanks for checking back.

Samar.