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Shredding cheese

C

Crusher

New member
I just got a price from my vendor and found out if I switch to shredding my own cheese, I will save .25 a pound. This comes out to about $7,000 a year! I have a Hobart H600, and would need to get an attachment. What size shredder disk gives a good shred for pizzas? Also any other advice about switching would be great.
-Crusher
 
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i use a 3/16" shredding wheel on my pelican head. it works great. just don’t push to hard on the feeder arm cuz they can break.
 
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I use a 3/32 blade. I like the finer shred because I find it gives better coverage.
 
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Don’t forget to figure in the extra labor.

5 min to set up the shredder
10 minutes to grab a case of cheese open it unwrap the loafs an cut into smaller cubes
10 minutes to shred the case and store
5 minutes to take apart shredder
5 minutes to clean shredder
35 minute total time if you have an employee that doesn’t get distracted and does there job perfectly every time. Also assuming that everyone who shreds the cheese applies the same pressure so you don’t get the inconsistency of shred thickness.
Let’s say 25 minutes because you don’t have to set up, take apart and wash shredder for every case
Then subtract payroll taxes and everything else involved with it.

Don’t get me wrong you’ll still be saving, just not as much as you think you are. My personal experience with employees is that the less difficult you make it for them the less of a chance for them to screw it up. An example, I had one employee go through half a loaf of cheese before he realized there was no bin catching the cheese.

Errico
 
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I do not count any extra labor. We are open during the day and it is slow enough for the manager on duty to handle all the usual prep including the cheese. When we switched to buying block cheese all those years ago there was ZERO increase in labor cost. Even if we did bring in someone early to do cheese, we can do our typical daily use (100-160 lbs) in about a half hour total. We use a VCM which is a bunch faster than a hobart though. Opening 3-4 cases of cheese and cutting each 20lb loaf into 3-4 blocks takes less than 10 minutes and we can dice 20lbs in about 30 seconds in the VCM.
 
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I had one employee go through half a loaf of cheese before he realized there was no bin catching the cheese.
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Bwahahaha!!! out the door he would have been at my place!
 
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Thanks guys. I’ve always known it would save some, but a Roma sales rep once told me the price difference was only about 6¢ less so I didn’t think it would be worth it. Labor I’m not worried about, we have down times and shouldn’t add any additional labor. Do you shred for the current day or do it for the next day? I use a 50/50 mix of part-skim and whole milk mozzarella, do we mix as we shred or shred and then mix them together?
 
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but a Roma sales rep once told me the price difference was only about 6¢ less so I didn’t think it would be worth it
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Don’t believe anything a food rep tells you
 
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Got my pelican head delivered today. Also got a case of LMPS and a case of WM Mozzarella. It came with a 3/16 shredder disk. I cut a loaf of each cheese into 1/8s and shredded them on the #2 speed. The cheese came out very sticky and almost crumbly. Any suggestions to improve?
 
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Crusher said:
Got my pelican head delivered today. Also got a case of LMPS and a case of WM Mozzarella. It came with a 3/16 shredder disk. I cut a loaf of each cheese into 1/8s and shredded them on the #2 speed. The cheese came out very sticky and almost crumbly. Any suggestions to improve?
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Going off my Sausage making experience,
I would try to keep your cheese really really cold, and freeze your shredding attachment assembly to it get as cold as possible,
If that does not work, you could cut the loaves into a smaller width, and dip those pieces into cornstarch before shredding, it worked for me when I was helping out a mexican raunt get processes down back in the day.
But I do not know how the starch will react being baked on a pizza, it may produce undesirable results if you go mental with the starch. So just enough to stop the problems you’re having.
Way way back, (1980’s) I used to run my cheese through a grinder attachment and it produced a product as workable as diced cheese.
 
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Crusher said:
Got my pelican head delivered today. Also got a case of LMPS and a case of WM Mozzarella. It came with a 3/16 shredder disk. I cut a loaf of each cheese into 1/8s and shredded them on the #2 speed. The cheese came out very sticky and almost crumbly. Any suggestions to improve?
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Are these the same brand and label as the shredded cheese that you used to purchase? I’m guessing you’ll want to do extensive searching for a cheese that cooks right for you, tastesright for you and cuts the way you want. LMPS is going to be quite different from one label to another.
 
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Crusher said:
Got my pelican head delivered today. Also got a case of LMPS and a case of WM Mozzarella. It came with a 3/16 shredder disk. I cut a loaf of each cheese into 1/8s and shredded them on the #2 speed. The cheese came out very sticky and almost crumbly. Any suggestions to improve?
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try a different brand of cheese, when we order cheese from our backup cheese guy it comes out a little wet and grainy but it doesn’t affect the final product.

you’re just north of us the the great cheese state! Do you guys have Battaglia distributing up there? They have a good cheese that grades well.
 
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I would send a bill to whatever Roma rep told you that blocks and shred only had a 6 cent gap. Even so that’s close to 3 bucks a box which if you go through 2-3 a day could cover a gas or an electric bill for the month. Even at .06 it’s still worth it to shred your own.

I use a PA-141 Fleetwood cheese shredder. I got it for 1k at an auction, works really well… we have to apply a bit of pressure with our lmps to keep it from coming out like cotton candy. Makes it real difficult to top a pie. A little pressure gives us fairly thick cheese that also doesn’t clump easily.
 
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How much over block are you paying? We are considering switching to shredding our own and just curious to see what the differences are out there
 
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