High hydration dough in a dough sheeter?

[Hassouni]

Hi all, working on dough recipes for mana'ish for my bar . In the meantime, I got a Doyon dough sheeter to help get the dough very thin. Yesterday we had a training with a mana'ish baker, and they gave us a recipe for a high hydration, high yeast dough - it was definitely well over 60% hydration, and came out super soft. When we tried to run the dough through the sheeter, it didn't really manage to get very thin - would a stiffer dough work better?

[pastrygirl]

The new dough might have needed a longer rest before sheeting. If a dough resists rolling or shaping, a 15+ minute rest to allow the gluten to relax often helps. 

[Hassouni]

I just saw a video from Doyon that said it's designed for doughs between 50-60% - I think that might have something to do with it! I'm just wondering if such a device can get dough as thin as I need it and how many passes it'll take - I'm looking for 1/8" or so

[pastrygirl]

I've never been that into bread so hopefully someone more familiar with hydration % will have more info on how that affects things. I've made plenty, just have more love for the sweeter things.   I'd think the main issue would be the softer dough sticking to the rollers, otherwise I don't see why your dough shouldn't get as thin as you want it.  If you didn't have the sheeter, you'd use a rolling pin, right?  If a dough keeps shrinking back and refusing to roll thin, it usually just needs to rest before you attack it again.  A freshly mixed dough will be "tight" and spring back when you poke it, if you're going to roll it thin the gluten needs to relax, no matter what tool you're using. 

 

What's your plan for service?  Will you bake all the bread earlier in the day or bake to order?  If you make and portion the dough early in the day and let it chill in the fridge for several hours, it will be a little firmer but well rested for easy rolling.  I've had to make pizza dough for a few restaurant jobs, the dough balls were good for 2 days.  To save cost, you can recycle old dough and mix a little into the new batch as a sort of 'starter' if you like that extra flavor. 

[Lisa Shock]

I have run pizza dough through a sheeter. You often need to run it through 2-3-4 times to get it thin.

 

What temperature was the dough and what was your room temperature? You should keep the room (and thus the machine) at or below 78°F and refrigerate the dough to >40° before running it through the sheeter. The cold dough should run through the sheeter with a minimal dusting of flour.

 

You can also try oiling the outside. At home, I like to oil the outside of pizza dough. I think it helps with the bake, much like oiling a potato for baking vs not oiling the potato. Dunno how oil will affect your particular machine, it works with some, not so well with others, some machines need to grip the raw flour to prevent the dough from sliding around.

 

Hope this helps!

[Hassouni]

When you say running it through up to 4 times, do you mean narrowing the rollers each time?

[Lisa Shock]

2 hours ago, Hassouni said:

When you say running it through up to 4 times, do you mean narrowing the rollers each time?

 

Yes. There's only so far down you can go on each pass or it will just jam or tear.

[chromedome]

5 hours ago, Lisa Shock said:

 

Yes. There's only so far down you can go on each pass or it will just jam or tear.

It's basically the same idea as running pasta dough through the rollers. You can't go from the lump of dough to a finished sheet in one pass, you have to take it through multiple steps.