Dough Sheeter 101: Why Every Food Service Operation Needs One
Posted on: 27 February 2019
Whether you're just opening your restaurant or you're getting ready to expand your menu to offer pastries and other baked goods, it's time to think about investing in a dough sheeter. Dough sheeters are useful pieces of equipment, but they do require some upkeep to stay that way. Here's a look at some of the things you should know about what you can use a sheeter for and how to keep it running its best.
What Purposes Can A Dough Sheeter Serve?
While you might think that these little units are an unnecessary investment, they can actually cut your production time substantially compared to manually rolling out dough. In addition, they can improve the quality of your finished product because you can get the precise thickness that you want. This gives you greater quality control compared to eyeballing the thickness and rolling dough out by hand.
There are many types of dough that a sheeter can be beneficial for.
High-Fat Dough: High-fat dough refers to things like puff pastry, croissant dough, and some types of pastry dough. They are also sometimes called laminated dough. Because of the work required to layer the butter and pastry together for these, it can be a challenge to make by hand. With a dough sheeter, you can make high-fat, flaky dough with ease and in a fraction of the time.
Pie Crust: If you sell a lot of pies, that's an awful lot of manual rolling, shaping, and cutting. With a dough sheeter, you can get the perfect thin, flaky pie crust you need for each of those pies in seconds, saving your prep staff for the actual filling prep and presentation.
Sweet Rolls: Many types of sweet rolls are made from thin layers of dough that are coated with a filling and then rolled and sliced. The dough needs to be very thin to get these right; otherwise, the rolls are too dense and lack sufficient filling and flavor. It can take a lot of time to manually roll sweet roll dough to the thickness required, and that's time you don't really have when you're trying to keep up with service. A dough sheeter can get you that perfect thin sweet roll dough so that all your staff has to do is fill, roll, cut, and bake.
Pizza: If pizza is a big seller in your area, a dough sheeter is a must. Rolling out pizza crusts by hand, while a great marketing niche, is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Not to mention, if you get a rush and you need a lot of pizzas quickly, that's not going to happen when you're rolling crusts by hand. A dough sheeter lets you run the pizza crust through a few times at graduated thicknesses to get the perfect dough in seconds.
What Should You Watch For With Your Dough Sheeter?
There are a few components that you need to monitor on your dough sheeter to help maintain consistent quality.
Belts: Watch the belts on the sheeter for any sign of wear, fraying, or catching. If the belt isn't flowing smoothly and consistently, it's a sign that it's wearing and may need to be replaced. Anytime you can see visible wear or fraying on the edges, that also means it should be replaced. Remember that the belt helps to keep the dough moving, so it has to be smooth and consistent in its operation.
Rollers And Sprockets: If the dough rollers, sprockets, and other moving parts start to bind up or slow down, they should be lubricated. Your equipment supplier can tell you the best oil to use for lubrication so that you don't bind things with clogged lubricant.
Dough Scraper: The dough scraper is a vital component because it eliminates any residual dough from the roller. Since the roller can bind up if dough builds up, you should scrape it after every use. The scraper should be kept clean and in good condition at all times and should be replaced if they fail to work properly or show any signs of damage.
For more information about equipment and supplies, visit a site such as http://louiswohl.com.
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