Just reading through the responses here and thought I’d add my 2-cents worth.
With regard to the amount of cheese, or any other toppings used, the amount that you are presently using is probably the amount which is right for you (actually, your customers). If you were to change the amount used, they may pick up on it and you would stand a chance of alienating some of your customers. Do you really want to take that chance? Also, hopefully, you have priced your pizzas to correctly reflect the amount of (in this case) cheese applied to your pizzas, so even if you are using more than the “norm” your customers seem to appreciate it, and they are paying for it, that’s a good deal by me. I’ve run some quick calculations on the amount of cheese some are using on their different size pies, and it varies quite a bit with some of you. Here is what I mean, if you calculate the surface area of each of your pizza sizes (12" 113 sq.in. ; 14" 154 sq.in. ; 16" 201 sq.in.) then divide the weight of cheese used by the surface area (sq. in./square inches) you will find the weight of cheese used per square inch. The weight of cheese theoretically, should be the same, per square inch of surface area for all of the sizes you make. For example, if you use 7 ounces of cheese on a 12-inch pizza, that calculates out to 0.0619469 ounces per square inch of surface area. If you multiply that by 154 (the surface area of a 14-inch pizza you get 9.5398226 (call it 9.5 or 10-ounces) of cheese weight, and if you multiply it by 201 (the surface area of a 16-inch pizza you get 12.451326 (call it 12.5 or 13-ounces) of cheese weight. If you work out your dough weights and topping weights this way, as yoiu go from a 12-inch pizza to say, a 16-inch pizza, the only thing that will change is the size/amount the customer is getting. For some of you, I see where you are using somewhat less cheese on your 16-inch pizzas, so, your 12-inch pizza is actually a better deal for your customers since they arew getting more cheese per square inch of the pizza, and I’d be willing to bet that this hasn’t been taken into account when the pizza was priced.
I hate to bore you with all of this math stuff, but some times it does come in handy, especially when we’re getting the “squeeze” put on us from all of our suppliers.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
