Ask Tom Lehmann a Question

Tom,
I am glad to get a chance to talk to a person for free who is expert in the industry in which i am a novice.I have nearly completed 80% of the work in starting my moving pizza corner.
Collected knowledge by working for 6 months in a pizza restaurant, i have just 5 days to start the business.Though my questions may be unusual to you, but my current investment and equipments are enough to start a pizzeria in this area of INDIA.

I need little advise on following:
  1. my oven is imported YXY20A , taiwan imported. gas type http://www.indiamart.com/international- … tml?ss=yxy
    I want to know what other veg items(snacks), i can bake in this oven along with pizza to expand my menu list.
  2. Since i am using force’s tempo traveller as our only kitchen and shop http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9 … jOZFGAA0rI
    we can place only limited things in it, available space inside is 10ft long,5’3"wide.
  3. Considering our space and the availability of items, could you please tell me which snacks/fast food can we include in our menu that are ready to bake and can be baked in the same oven.
  4. we have decided to sell paneer roll, italian roll along with this, any help for preparing them would be appreciated.
Thanks,
handa 🙂
 
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Tom,

I am looking at expanding my home bread baking business. I need a new oven . The deck ovens designed for bread are out of reach at this point. So the question is would a nice solid pizza oven like a Blodgett 1000 which has a taller baking chamber and plenty of deck size
work for high hydration hearth bread? I realize the btu output is overkill but I like the deck size and temp range. Additionally with the stainless construction it might take a little steam.

Thanks

Kevin
 
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Kevin;
Normally it’s the other way around, the pizza ovens are selling at a premium and the baker’s ovens are dead dogs on the market. This is due to the fact that there are so many more pizzerias opening as opposed to retail bakeries. IF all you are going to bake in the oven is hearth breads, then this oven might work for you, BUT if you plan to bake anything else in it note that you will most likely need to put a screen or something under the pans to prevent the bottom of the product from burning. Remember, pizza ovens are designed to bake from the BOTTOM UP and bakers ovens are designed to bake from the TOP DOWN. I’m not so sure that I would want to put steam into any oven not designed for steam as BAD things always end up happening.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Tom,

Thank you for your reply. I was looking initially at the pavlier deck ovens which are stratospheric in cost. However after reading your post I am finding cabinet style bread ovens are available and at a reasonable cost. Most are electric and some are single phase which is important for me. One company in particular De Lux out of Florida
makes a combination proofer/oven that can handle steam and even sells the part.
I guess this leads to yet another question, if I may. What kind of bake can I expect
out of a cabinet style oven I.E. on sheet pans vs peeling the loaves on to a deck.
Will I lose all my oven spring? Can I still achieve a decent crust?

Thanks again,

Kevin
 
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Kevin;
Ovens of that type are actually more suited to things like pan breads and rolls, sweetgoods, pies and cookies. They are not designed to have much bottom heat, but you might be able to get around that by using unglazed floor tiles in the 18 X 26 sheet pans to create a hearth for your breads to be baked on. We have had good success in doing things like this in other types of ovens, so it might work in this application too. Sometimes if you look around you might even find composite oven hearth material that can be used as a substitute for the sheet pans. You might Google composite oven hearth material to see what you can find, or go to [email protected] to see what they might have.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Hi Tom,

My partner and I are getting close to opening our first pizza restaurant, and I am looking to confirm my sales forecast. I’ve collected primary data through phone surveys within our target market. So far, the average pizzas bought are 2.5 pizzas per month per person. Because our target market has 10,000 people and 30% are children, we are planning on 7,000 able buyers. Of that seven thousand, we are only planning on having 35% of the market share. In this small town, there Is one other pizzeria. I plan on them having 1/3 of the market share and the city 20 minutes away having the other third.

With all that said, is there any way to figure a solid sales forecast? My primary data figures seem well founded, but I can’t imagine selling 1500 pizzas a week in a small town of 10,000 people.
 
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J;
I’d like to be able to help you with your question, but it is too far outside of my area of expertiese for me to even begin to offer an answer. I’m sure there are a bunch of much better operations people out there than me. Anybody care to jump in and help J. ?
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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HI Tom love your info going to offer pizza on menu do i need to order a dough retarder table or a pizza prep table some supplierssay it the same if doing a small volume what do you think about using frozen dough balls . they say if defrosted it will raise also maybe using a woodfired oven thanks
 
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JB;
Please define “small volume”. How many pizzas per day are you talking about?
What is your store concept?
Frozen dough is an alternative to making your own dough, but it will be more costly than making your own dough unless your volume of dough balls needed daily is very small.
We really need to have some idea of your volume before any recommendation for equipment can be made.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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thanks for thanking the time to help me tom our store setup is at weekend farmers market just one day at this time it may be two over the next month we will not be doing a full time bus just a couple of days
would start off with 200 10 oz for small pies and 80 16 oz for slices for each day of sales the max table size would be 72 inch
 
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Jb;
To get started I’d suggest the following:
60-quart planetary mixer
2-door reach-in cooler
15 plastic dough boxes (deep) (www.wrh.net)
12 plastic dough boxes (shallow) (www.wrh.net)
Prep table with refrigeration below.
Scale for weighing ingredients and dough balls (www.A&Dweighing.com) Model # SK2000WPZ
Metal bench scraper and plastic dough scrapers (www.amnow.com)
Pizza wheels for cutting the pizzas American Metalcraft (www.amnow.com)
Short handle wood prep peels (www.amnow.com)
Metal blade oven peel (amnow.com)
Most of the rest of the small stuff you should be able to buy locally, or check out (www.restaurantequippers.com) be sure to check out their “spoodles”.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Hi Tom
I have just started in the pizza business, now I was planning to use a recipe by Bruno, which I have made at home, using the slow rise in my refrigerator.
I have a couple of questions I be glad if you could answere them for me.
What would be my ideal temperature of my dough when I finish mixing?
Should I coat the dough trays and dough balls with oil?
Would wrapping cling film around the crack between the boxes help?
What temperature should my walk in cooler be?
What is the best protein flower to use?
Regards
Vernon
 
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Vernon;
To answer youe flour protein question I need to know what type of crust you are trying to make.
As for oiling the dough boxes, don’t. Place the formed dough balls into the dry box and then lightly coat the top surface of each dough ball with oil. Many use a vegetable oil such as canola oil for this.
There is no need to seal the crack/small gap between the stacked dough boxes. But DO BE SURE TO CROSS STACK the dough boxes after you put them into the cooler. Leave them cross stacked for about 2.5-hours, then down stack and nest the boxes.
As for the cooler temperature, Check with your local health department as they will dictate what that temperature is, but look for something in the 36 to 40F range.
If you will e-mail me at [email protected] I’ll send you a copy of my Dough Management Procrdure.
The typical recommended finished dough temperature is 80 to 85F when a walk in cooler is used. When a reach in cooler is used the temperature should be adjusted to the 70 to 75F range, always favoring the lower end of the recommendation in both cases.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Jdove, as no-one has jumped in to your sales forcast question, I thought I would give it a shot:
  1. You are correct in being skeptical of the 1500 pizzas you came up with. I see two key problems with your assumptions:
    a. “Able buyers” I would suggest you count households rather than people. This will cut your "market size down to a more reasonable starting point. Even though a household might have more than one “Able Buyer” they will not both order the same day! Also, not all households eat pizza. I can imagine that active pizza buyers purchase 2.5 pies per month but you are starting with a really high assumption of the market size. My guess is that it would less than half the 7000 you came up with.
b. 35% market share. This is a very agressive assumption. You would be doing very well indeed to get 10% as a new business. Also, consider that your market is not just pizza. You will be competing with all the options for a meal. The good news is that this is a larger pie. For example in my market, I estimate that I have about 22% of the delivery market (eight places that deliver now) but I have only 1.2% of the restaurant market. (source is city sales tax reporting for restaurants). Good news for me? Lots of people that need to eat!

You can certainly work up a forecast with market size and market share assumptions, but I find that there are so many moving parts that doing so on an individual small market basis is much more likely to give you a wrong answer than a right one.

What I would suggest that you do instead is come up with an estimate of the size of the local pizza market by checking out for your local competitors. Check out the menus and the offers and figure out what the average ticket comes to. Then spend some time counting customers and delivery departures during the rush. I think you will find that most business is done at the busy times of the day so watching these things during the rush will give you some pretty good info.

I can tell you, that as a delivery operation, I would need to have 4-5 drivers on to run 200 pizzas per day unless I had a huge lunch business (which I do not).

I would be very reluctant to forecast being the high volumn leader in town right out of the box. When I opened 13 years ago I ordered from all 5 existing pizza delivery businesses to check out the quality and tried to figure out how many drivers they had on each night.

You might also ask your banker what kind of sales they would expect to see from the kind of operation you are planning.

A new business CAN add to the market so you are not limited to taking a slice of already existing pie, but I don’t think that all new business comes out of thin air and you can not count on the existing businesses sitting still while you eat their lunch.

I hope that helps.
 
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Hey Steve, I also voiced concern over jdove’s estimates. Jdove check your private message area and you will see an April 19th post I sent you. The link is up top and should show you have messages. Sorry to Tom for jumping in on your area but I thought he could use some market support also. Jdove… please read and take to heart as we are here to help…just please dont tell us you are a PH, PJ. or Doms franchise! 😉
 
Hi Tom
I used a recipe which called for 2 ounces of fresh yeast ( Bruno Difabio), now when I used this, my pizza crust was over sized, now I was searching the recipe bank, and noted you made a refrence to using fresh yeast, a apposed to using Fermipan® Instant Yeast, which you said you should use 1/3
I used 2 ounces of Fermipan® Instant Yeast instead.
Could this have been my problem?
 
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Vernon;
In reality you used 3-times as much yeast as you should have. I’d say in all likely hood, that was your problem. Keep in mind that all of the instant yeasts (IDY’s) are used at 1/3 of the WEIGHT of fresh/compressed yeast amount. IDY is best added dry, directly to the flour.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Hi Tom
What dough recipe would you use if starting up your own pizza store, with conveyor oven. Would you use the same recipe for thin crust and pan pizza
I did see your 3 pt movie, but there was no recipe on the movie, that I could see.
 
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Vernon;
For my thin crust I would use this formula:
Flour (12.8 to 13.4% protein content) 100%
Salt: 1.75%
IDY: 0.375%
Olive oil: 1.5%
Water: (65F) 58% variable

For a thick crust pizza I would use the following dough formula:
Flour (11.8 to 12.4% protein content) 100%
Salt: 1.75%
Sugar: 2%
IDY: 0.5%
Shortening/butter: 4%
Water: (65F) 58% variable

Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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