When You Can’t Fit a Dough Sheeter into Your Kitchen.…

[BakerAunt]

I read an interesting article about an alternative to a dough sheeter used by a small restaurant:

Konbi Has a Secret Croissant Machine

Spread the word

      

  

  

[Mike Nolan]

Ingenious, now I'll lay awake nights trying to figure out how to sneak one into my kitchen.

[skeptic7]

I couldn't fit one of those in my kitchen. I wonder if there is something smaller still like a oversize pasta machine that would roll out the croissant dough.

[Mike Nolan]

There are some that appear to fit on a 30" x 14" space, I could see doing one on a small table that stores away when not in use. The big challenge might be that some of them can't handle anything over an inch thick, and laminated dough often is thicker than that at the start of each turn.

Interestingly enough, when you search on 'slab roller' today, you also get a number of pasta rollers, which didn't happen a few days ago, so I suspect we're not the only bakers who have gone net-surfing.

[skeptic7]

I also went looking for cheaper slab rollers and there are some portable ones out there for clay. I guess one problem about repurposing these is to find out how easy it would be to take apart and clean.

[Mike Nolan]

I've seen artists put clay through a slab roller, the clay gets everywhere and if it dries it is tough to get out, so they're usually relatively easy to take apart and clean.

But cleaning up a dough sheeter can be a bit of work, too.

I'd be a bit more concerned about them meeting sanitation standards, especially in a commercial environment.

[BakerAunt]

I'm going to try the pasta attachment to my food machine on noodles and see it by any chance it would work on my cracker dough. Ideally, I would like something wider. While I can and do roll out by hand with my dough wands, I could produce many more crackers--and keep up with my husband's consumption of those crackers--if I had a machine doing it. However, the sheeter takes up too much space--even if I parked it in my spare kitchen in the apt. over that garage.

Someone out there is going to make a fortune when she or he figures out how to make a compact, easy to clean "sheeter" for the household kitchen. Surely there is a niche there with home bakers--particularly the ones with lots of money who use their new toy a couple of times then forget about it....

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Italiancook]

I don't have a Cusinart, which is what I think your machine is, BakerAunt, but I'm please with how the pasta attachment works on the KitchenAid. So I imagine many machine noodles in your future.

BakerAunt, I've been meaning to tell you & apologize for not doing it sooner. Regarding raccoons and garbage cans, my trash collection company offers a raccoon-proof device for garbage cans. Free of charge. It works somewhat like a bungee cord, but is not that. We've tried bungee cords, and the raccoons just take it off. I don't understand why the raccoons can't remove the trash companies device, but they don't. I learned about this from a friend, and it also keeps the raccoons out of her garbage cans. They're small enough that the trash company mails them to me. Ask for 2 or 3, because the occasionally disappear when the trash man dumps the can into truck.

[skeptic7]

Its amazing what you buy and then realize its useless. I had a whisk that was suppose to work by pushing up and down -- it was too hard to clean. I have an egg beater that works but it has wavy sides and is harder to clean than the one with smooth sides. I've given up on the triple screen shifters with a push and release type handle, the rotating one is far easier to clean. A friend gave me glass tubes for baking bread and I haven't even tried it.

[Mike Nolan]

My favorite whisk is one that ATK rated at the bottom. I have an OXO eggbeater that works well and disassembles for easy cleaning. We still like the old-fashioned sifters that shake sideways for those occasions when we still sift anything.

I've used my KA Pasta roller attachment to roll out cookie and cracker dough, the width limitation is an issue. There are some commercial pasta rollers that support up to a 10" width. With laminated dough, handling it to feed it through a pasta roller would likely fracture the butter. The sheet rollers don't do that, and I don't think the clay slab rollers would, either. But I think it would be hard to make a sheet roller that didn't require 30 inches or more of counter width, though the big commercial ones require more like 8 feet. About the only way I can think of to do it would be for the roller itself to move left and right, and that would be challenging.

One advantage a sheet roller has over manual rolling is that the pressure is consistent across the full width. That means you don't get a lot of spreading as you pass the dough back and forth through the rollers. Lengthening, yes, but not spreading.

I've seen some videos of experienced pastry makers rolling out laminated doughn by hand without losing the rectangular shape, but I've also seen some very experienced chefs who had to fiddle with the shape to keep it rectangular.

[Mike Nolan]

I think the folks at Brod and Taylor must have noticed the posts on various sites a few years ago about using a clay slab roller to roll out laminated dough.

See https://brodandtaylor.com/products/dough-sheeter

The specs say the sheeter board is 23.5 x 12 inches and will handle 200-300 grams of dough. I suspect it wouldn't be too hard to make a longer sheeter board if that's too short.

It gets down to 1mm thickness, it'd probably be good for things like crackers and pasta dough, too. My KA pasta roller attachments are only 5 1/2 inches wide.

[BakerAunt]

I want this dough sheeter! I could turn out crackers faster and finally tackle pasta!

I mentioned it to my husband who blanched at the price. Sigh.

[Mike Nolan]

I have similar thoughts, sounds like something I'd use but it is a tad pricey.

I'd say hope that the price comes down, but I think the Brod & Taylor proofer has already gone up in price since it first was introduced.

[skeptic7]

Very cute. Its cheaper than a professional model. I wonder if I would add enough laminated dough recipes to my repertore if I had one. Currently I don't make any laminated dough recipes but now rolling out dough by hand is a long labor intensive process.

[RiversideLen]

It looks nice but very pricey. The thing is, they've sold out the first production so I don't think the price will be coming down soon.

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