Making Smaller Batches of Dough

[FiresidePizzeria]

Since I do not have my shop anymore, I have been making half batches by hand. The consistency is obviously not as good as when I use a mixer. Is it possible to take my recipe for a 60qt. mixer and cut it into thirds if I decided to buy a 20qt.? Or is it more complex?

Thank you for looking!

 

[Daddio]

If you use bakers percentages you should be able to reduce your recipe to whatever size you need. Are you familiar with bakers percentages?

 

[FiresidePizzeria]

No sir!! I can look them up, but it might be better coming from a pro such as yourself.

 

[brad_randall]

The King Arthur website has a really nice walk through of how to set up and use Baker’s Percentages: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/professional/bakers-percentage.html

 

[FiresidePizzeria]

So, since I use cups, how would that work? I use pounds for flour, gallons for water, but cups for sugar, oil and yeast.

 

[Daddio]

Here is a site that will help you convert volume to weight
https://www.biggerbolderbaking.com/weight-conversion-chart/

 

[Tom_Lehmann]

The most effective and accurate way to find the actual weights for your ingredients is for YOU to portion out each ingredient three times into a suitably sized container, do this for each ingredient, then weigh each container and subtract the tare, now you have 3X the ingredient weight. Divide this by 3 and you now have the average weight for each of your ingredients which can now be converted into bakers%. I just finished writing a column for In Lehmann’s Terms on this very topic. Note: I emphasized “you” above since there is some variance in the way each of us volumetrically portions ingredients, by having you do this personally you have taken a step to further eliminate any error in the conversion. The reason for doing it three times is to further reduce the scaling error/variability common to volumetric portions.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

 

[FiresidePizzeria]

Thank you everyone. I have a good idea on what to do now

 

[FiresidePizzeria]

I decided to try halfingmy dough recipe again. My water amount ended up being more than half. But my consistency was much better. I did all the mixing by hand.

 

[Pizzoun]

Have simple excel table and put the percentages there. Then you can make any batch. Just write number of dough balls and it gives you amount of ingredients to be mixed

 

[FogHorn]

http://www.mypizzamaster.com/calculator.php

You can include up to 10 different flours if your dough has a specific flour combo, etc. Nifty little tool. You can even calculate the cheese and sauce amounts as well.