BBH;
Actually, there is no “ideal” time except to say that one should strive to accomplish stabilizing the dough reasonably fast but with great consistency. Due to the insulating properties of the dough you can only extract BTUs from the dough so fast using cold air. With that said, remember, the larger the dough ball the longer it will take to drop the temperature to 45F. (internal temperature). The heavier dough balls weighing in at around 22-ounces will typically require about 3-hours to accomplish this while dough balls in the 12 to 14-ounce range typically require around 2-hours. These numbers are based on using commercial stacking dough boxes but you mentioned using sheet pans and racks so your actual times will most likely be a bit less. A refrigeration engineer, given the individual dough ball weight, number of dough balls, dough density, rack weight, air temperature, airflow and pan weight should be able to provide you with an estimate of time needed. I think if it were me, I’d just size it for a 2.5-hour cool down period. Make sure you have plastic strip curtains over the doors and plan to bag the dough trays (sheet pans) while in the cooler. Your cooler temperature at 35F is lower than what most use, more typically it’s in the 36 to 38F range. In the end, you will need to determine the exact time needed to achieve the target internal temperature range of 43 to 45F. Once it reaches that point it’s time to go into the cooler and begin bagging the dough and your 48-hour clock begins ticking. This is all predated on the assumption that you will remove the dough balls from the cooler after at least 48-hours, allow them to temper AT room temperature until they reach an average internal temperature of 50F before you begin opening them into skins, if you are planning on using different dough management parameters the temperatures may need to be adjusted slightly to better accommodate your dough management procedure.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor