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Actually, the work was done back in the 70’s and to the best of my knowledge it was done on pan breads. To the best of my knowledge there hasn’t been any work done on pizza and potassium bromate residual. With that said, public opinion still remains strong that potassium bromate is a public health concern so if there is indeed a “parts per billion” residual bromate is actually a moot question.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Jason;
Should all of my questions be so easy to answer. In fact, I didn’t answer it, you did when you said that you didn’t cross-stack the dough boxes. That’s the reason why the dough “blew” during the night. Colder dough isn’t the answer, the options that you have available if you don’t have room to cross-stack is to use an end to end off-set stacking pattern (You’ve got to allow for ventilation of heat out of the boxes, or you see what happens. The other option is to oil the dough balls and drop them into individual plastic food bags, twist the open end into a pony tail to close then tuck the pony tail (DO NOT TIE) under the dough ball as you place it onto an aluminum sheet pan, then place directly into your cooler in a pan rack with a 5" spacing between the shelf brackets. With this method there is no need to cross-stack. A variation of this method is to place the dough balls directly onto a very lightly oiled sheet pan and place then in the rack in the cooler allowing then to remain uncovered for 3-hours, then slip a large plastic bag over each pan of dough balls, folding the bottom opening of the bag up over the leading edge of the dough balls and then pull the top opening of the bag down to completely cover the front of the pan and tuck the edges under the sheet pan to secure.
If you have any questions, please free free to contact me directly at 785-537-1037 and I’ll be glad to walk you through it.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
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Tom,

First off I apologize for the extremely delayed response. Lots going on. I did end up devising a way to “cross stack.” I re-purposed a bun rack in our walk in. We slide each dough tray in its own position, uncovered for a minimum of 1 hour. This solved the overnight blow up of the dough. I still seem to have an issue however. The dough is still proofing much too fast, 2-3 days usually. We cut and ball our dough within 20 minutes from mixer. I have even reduced our yeast to 2oz, and water temp to 60F and can usually stretch it to 4 days or so usually. What could be going on now? I feel that initially with the new procedures, even with the 3oz of yeast, was fine for a while, maybe 2 weeks or so. But then it started to proof faster for some reason. I buy Sysco Classic HG flour, could the quality of flour have changed, causing some part of the recipe to go out of wack? One thing I should note: Sometimes when the dough is very fluffy and proofed, and you stretch it out, it is quite elastic and almost feels like half the doughball is in a different state of proof than the rest, almost as if parts of the doughball are proofing faster than other parts. As always any advice is appreciated!

-Jason

P.S. Current recipe is as follows:

50lb HG flour
14oz Salt
16oz Sugar
2oz Yeast
16fl.oz oil (by weight came out to what recipe called for)

add sugar/salt, add water, flour then yeast. Mix for 2 mins on low speed to hydrate, mix for 2 mins while drizzling in oil, mix for 8 mins at medium speed, cut/ball/oil/rotate.
 
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Jason;
60-minutes/1-hour of cross-stack time isn’t sufficient time to allow the dough to cool enough. I suggest that you try this:
  1. Increase the yeast (assuming it’s IDY) to 3-ounces which is equal to 0.375% (a good working level for IDY).
  2. Check and confirm the finished/mixed dough temperature, it should be between 75 and 80F.
  3. Allow the dough boxes to remain cross-stacked for 2.5-hours then cover/nest for the night.
  4. To use the dough remove from the cooler, allow to warm AT room temperature until the dough balls reach 50F then begin opening into skins by your preferred method. Dough balls will remain good to use for an additional 3-hours.
Let me know how this works for you.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Jason;
60-minutes/1-hour of cross-stack time isn’t sufficient time to allow the dough to cool enough. I suggest that you try this:
  1. Increase the yeast (assuming it’s IDY) to 3-ounces which is equal to 0.375% (a good working level for IDY).
  2. Check and confirm the finished/mixed dough temperature, it should be between 75 and 80F.
  3. Allow the dough boxes to remain cross-stacked for 2.5-hours then cover/nest for the night.
  4. To use the dough remove from the cooler, allow to warm AT room temperature until the dough balls reach 50F then begin opening into skins by your preferred method. Dough balls will remain good to use for an additional 3-hours.
Let me know how this works for you.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
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Thanks for the response! In my original revised recipe, IDY was 3oz and finished dough temp was in that specified range. But dough was still blowing in ~2 days. I should clarify, minimum uncovered cooling time is 1 hour, but more often than not, it is between 2 and 4. Ill make sure to increase my minimum to 2.5. Ill experiment with leaving dough out.

Thanks again Tom!

Jason
 
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Jason;
You do want to be consistent with the cross-stack time, if you go with 2.5-hours keep it at that, or if you go with 3-hours just keep it at that as you will get a different rate of cooling with different times. One other thing to check on is the temperature of your walk-in cooler, it should be operating at between 36 and 40F.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Hey Tom,
What’s best for take n bake pizza? Sheeter or Hot Press. I’m using the take n bake recipe you have. I want a great tasting pizza, something that would give Papa Murphy’s a run for their money. We’ll be using unique ingredients and eventually would like to turn the take n bake as a commissary for wood fired pizza business. Thoughts?
 
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Michael;
Sheeters are fine if you are not looking for a finished crust with any kind of a pronounced raised edge or if you are making one of the cracker type crusts (they’re actually required to make that type of crust as the dough is too tough to press or open by hand). If you would like to have a more open textured crust with a bit of a raised edge I think a sheeter might be your best bet in this case.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Hi Tom.
We will be moving our dough production out of the stores and into a commissary and have some equipment questions.
Our pizza dough is very stiff, 60+ AR. I’ve read that you would advise us to stay away from spiral mixers, so we’ll stick with our 80 qt Hobarts. What dough divider/ rounders would work best for us? We’ll start in the range of 1,000 - 1,500 lbs./ day. An AM S302?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Brett
 
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Brett;
When did I suggest that you stay away from spiral mixers? You are looking at making 12 to 18 doughs per day in an 80-quart planetary mixer (assuming your dough size is based on 50-pounds flour weight. A spiral mixer would be much better suited for the task at hand, especially if you plan to use the A-M S-302. The only advantage that the planetary mixer has over a spiral mixer is the fact that it has an attachment hub and can also be used for mixing sauce. With that number of dough balls a day the spiral mixer will hold up much better and provide you with MUCH longer trouble free operation. If you still need a mixer for mixing sauce I would then look at getting something like an 80-quart planetary mixer with a flat beater just for that purpose. With a spiral mixer I would suggest looking for something with a capacity of at least 150-pounds of flour (250-pounds of dough weight), remember that you can mix smaller size doughs too (25% of capacity is the smallest dough size recommended).
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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My mistake on the spiral mixer. Memory failure.

Is the A-M S302 a good option for us, or is thee a better one?

Thanks,

Brett
 
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My mistake on the spiral mixer. Memory failure.

Is the A-M S302 a good option for us, or is thee a better one?

Thanks,

Brett
Click to expand...
I have gone thru the ups and downs of this process over the last year. I’m no expert but I can tell you the direction we went.

First off, a spiral mixer is the way to go. No doubt about it. The best equipment investment I have ever made is Spiral. For 13K brand new I have a mixer that does 3 bags ( 240 lbs finished ) in about 7 minutes. Total workhorse. 5 years in and not 1 repair bill yet. Getting the dough out of the mixer can be a challenge but the guys get it done.

For the divider rounder I went with the s251 divider and the r900c rounder. The rounder is a no brainer. We bought that first and used it solo. Then added the divider later. You get a little more muscle for a little less money with this setup. I find the r900 rounder a little better that the one that comes with the 302.

The divider can be a bit challenging to set up at first. You have these oil inlets that have to be adjusted just right for your dough. If the oil is too light it wont feed and cut well. If the oil is too heavy it will feed and cut but it wont round well. It took us about 3 weeks to get ours set right. The clean up of the units does take some. We have it down to about 30 minutes now but it was much longer at first. I have found that 1000 lbs of dough is the break even amount for using this machine. If you do less than that in a day you will spend more time cleaning the machine than you would by hand cutting the dough.

We do about 3000 lbs of dough a day. It takes 3 people about 2.5 hours to do this. Don’t believe the “1 person operation” statement they make about this unit. It is so fast that it takes 2 people to unload the conveyor and tray the dough balls. We have 2 people load and run the divider and 1 person just mixes dough and unloads the spiral. If you use a hobart 802 you will have a hard time keeping the divider filled. It just cant make dough fast enough. When the time comes I’m going to buy a 500 lb capacity spiral mixer with a lift that dumps the dough out for us. I will then have enough mixer to keep up with the divider.

David
 
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pizzapiratespp said:
I have gone thru the ups and downs of this process over the last year. I’m no expert but I can tell you the direction we went.

First off, a spiral mixer is the way to go. No doubt about it. The best equipment investment I have ever made is Spiral. For 13K brand new I have a mixer that does 3 bags ( 240 lbs finished ) in about 7 minutes. Total workhorse. 5 years in and not 1 repair bill yet. Getting the dough out of the mixer can be a challenge but the guys get it done.

For the divider rounder I went with the s251 divider and the r900c rounder. The rounder is a no brainer. We bought that first and used it solo. Then added the divider later. You get a little more muscle for a little less money with this setup. I find the r900 rounder a little better that the one that comes with the 302.

The divider can be a bit challenging to set up at first. You have these oil inlets that have to be adjusted just right for your dough. If the oil is too light it wont feed and cut well. If the oil is too heavy it will feed and cut but it wont round well. It took us about 3 weeks to get ours set right. The clean up of the units does take some. We have it down to about 30 minutes now but it was much longer at first. I have found that 1000 lbs of dough is the break even amount for using this machine. If you do less than that in a day you will spend more time cleaning the machine than you would by hand cutting the dough.

We do about 3000 lbs of dough a day. It takes 3 people about 2.5 hours to do this. Don’t believe the “1 person operation” statement they make about this unit. It is so fast that it takes 2 people to unload the conveyor and tray the dough balls. We have 2 people load and run the divider and 1 person just mixes dough and unloads the spiral. If you use a hobart 802 you will have a hard time keeping the divider filled. It just cant make dough fast enough. When the time comes I’m going to buy a 500 lb capacity spiral mixer with a lift that dumps the dough out for us. I will then have enough mixer to keep up with the divider.

David
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Thanks David, I really appreciate the information. This helps a lot. 3,000 lbs. in 2.5 hours with 3 people is impressive!

Do you foresee any issues with a very stiff dough and the S302?

Sincerely,

Brett
 
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Thanks David, I really appreciate the information. This helps a lot. 3,000 lbs. in 2.5 hours with 3 people is impressive!

Do you foresee any issues with a very stiff dough and the S302?

Sincerely,

Brett
Click to expand...
You got me on that one. I really don’t know. Ours is on the softer side.
 
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Brett;
What kind of flour and what absorption are we talking about when defining “stiff” dough?
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Brett;
It should handle it just fine. Now, if you had said something about the absorption being under 55% it would be highly questionable or if you had said something in the 40% range the answer would have been highly unlikely, but 60% should work just fine.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Brett;
It should handle it just fine. Now, if you had said something about the absorption being under 55% it would be highly questionable or if you had said something in the 40% range the answer would have been highly unlikely, but 60% should work just fine.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
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Ours is around 60%. I would not consider it stiff

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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Tom,

I was bored and started toying around with the dough calculator and ended up with this recipe which seems to be in line with typical NY style recipes on the net:

Flour (100%)s
Water (63%)
CY (1%)
Salt (2%)
Oil (2%)
Total (168%)

The flour: 25lbs of bromated All Trump

My procedure:
Add water, salt, flour, yeast, mix for about 2 minutes or until the mix is hydrated then add the oil. Mix for about 15 more minutes, all of this is on speed 1 using a hobart L600 that is probably from around the 1980’s. I’ve never tried any other speed on the mixer because it’s just how I’ve been taught (we use 50lb bags of flour for a batch and I’m sure speed 2 would break the thing pretty quickly)

So this brings me to my question/problem:
The finished dough is extremely tacky, wet and gooey. Almost impossible to work with. When rolled, i can only put (what I consider) a small amount in dough trays because they start to go flat in about 20 minutes, touching each other and the tray walls. I’ll try and snap a pic to show. They look nothing like what we make.

The thing is, our recipe isn’t much different. Typical 50lb of flour and 4 gallons of water so it doesn’t seem like the hydration would be causing this…

What we do differently though is we add the oil with the water before we add the flour instead of using the delayed method that you talk about. We also use a different quantity of both shortening and oil… Not sure why, it’s just how I was taught. Could one of these be the culprit? Could I be adding the oil too soon/too late? Would the quantity of fats cause excessive gooeyness? Our quantities aren’t extremely different by any means.

I tried a second batch thinking maybe I under-mixed the batch, but after 35 minutes of mixing (speed 1) I just assumed it wouldn’t be getting any better, if anything it would start getting worse if it hadn’t already…

All this said, they actually make a very tasty pizza, not very far off from what we make. A nice little crispy almost fried tasting crust that baked really well. Just so much different in and out of the bowl…

Any ideas?
 
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