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

[aaronatthedoublef]

Just saw this! BA - I have used our pasta maker to roll out cracker dough. It is only about six inches wide so I need to roll out six or more sheets of cracker dough as opposed to three bigger sheets. I think I started with 100 g of dough if I remember correctly.

Plus it needs extra flour to make sure the cracker dough didn't stick. Between the extra rolling and the extra clean up the pasta maker did not appear to offer me any benefit over my rolling pin.

Now a sheeter that is a foot or two wide could handle an entire batch at once!

I remember a "Good Eats" where Alton Brown used a pasta maker attached to an ironing board to roll out strudel. It was long and strudel dough is not wide so it was perfect. We just installed an ironing board that folds away into the wall - like a Murphy Bed ironing board so maybe something like that for Mike's fold-away sheeter? The problem with the foldaway ironing board for this is that it is smaller than a standard model - shorter & narrower. Plus with the cabinet it weighs over 100 pounds so installation is not trivial.

I have a milestone birthday next month and while I might be able to justify the cost, I have not place to put it and if it is a big project to take it out it won't be used very often. My family gave me a panini press that I am not allowed to leave on the counter so it is almost never used. Take it out, set it up, wait for it to heat up, make panino (or panini), then wait for cool down, clean up, put away... it's easier to just make hot sandwiches in a pan on the stove. Not as good, but much easier.

But a Murphy Bed sheeter arrangement would be cool. You would still need to be able to break it down and clean it easily.

I went to a local bakery for the first time and she rolls out all her croissants by hand. She said it takes her four days to make them.

[BakerAunt]

My kitchen does not have the wall space for a foldaway anything. I'm still vexed that the cabinetry is not more useful. I keep trying, but I wish my husband had acceded to my desire for open shelving in the back area. His rationale is that because we are on a lake, where the front of the house is, people enter at the back from the street, and the shelves would be on view.

However, we have an Annex--the new name for the apartment over the garage--that we are having renovated and will use as an extension of our house. (Our contractor works in fits and starts, so we are waiting for the window trim and then the siding, and a couple of little jobs inside.) The Annex has a small kitchen, with an electric stove and refrigerator, and more importantly, my beloved kitchen table with the kind of faux wood top that was popular in the 1950s. I remember dying Easter eggs on it as a child with my siblings. When I was single and bought my house, one non-negotiable was a kitchen that would accommodate the kitchen table. I've rolled a lot of dough on it and set out racks and racks for cookies.

To live where my husband wanted to live, in a house we could afford, I had to accept a smaller kitchen (improved when we remodeled although still small), but the Annex makes up for it, even though it alone still does not give me the storage I need. I do my jam making over there, since I can leave out my equipment between batches, and I'm planning to try pasta making over there. The sheeter looks small enough, and easy enough to set up that it would work on that table.

Of course, the sheeter is just a dream, especially since we must have a new well drilled, and while not as costly as we had feared, it is still a hefty price tag. We are being ultraconservative with water until then. We have applied for the permit, and now we wait to be put on the company's schedule.

[cwcdesign]

Glad to hear your new well is in progress, BA.

Hopefully, my windows should be here soon - my contractor was given a firm date of mid-September.

[Mike Nolan]

We've had some unexpected expenses lately, too, so this is kind of a back burner wish list item.

[Mike Nolan]

I broke down and ordered the Brod and Taylor dough sheeter (it's my anniversary present to myself), it should be here tomorrow. BTW, they now have a somewhat larger model, the platform is 15x35 vs 12x24, which might work better for cottage industry production, but I went with the smaller one.

[BakerAunt]

How exciting! When it arrives, and you start using it, Mike, we want to see pictures!

The reviews were all about laminated dough, but I am really curious about how well it would work for cracker dough and pasta dough.

[Joan Simpson]

Woopee Mike, can't wait to see your goods you'll be making!Nice!

[Mike Nolan]

I may try making puff pastry first, so I can make apple turnovers like we made in pastry school. My first cracker-like project will probably be carta di musica or some kind of lavosh.

[Mike Nolan]

The dough sheeter has arrived. It's fairly simple, the central section with the gears, two rods that extend to the sides to rest the rolling plate on, the rolling plate and a handle, and it looks well made and easy to keep clean. The rolling plate is small enough it will fit in the refrigerator, which will make chilling the dough between turns easier. (That would not have been the case with the larger model.)

It did not come with any recipes and the Brod and Taylor website doesn't appear to have any recipes specifically for the sheeter, so sizing dough will be a learning process. Their website says it handles 200-300 grams of dough, but that may be based on final rollout thickness and the overall dimensions of the rollout plate. I've used croissant recipes that had you divide the dough into two parts for final rollout, that should work here as well.

I've sized my puff pastry and croissant dough recipes in a spreadsheet table that has 7 columns to make from 200-800 grams of dough. I'll probably start with a 300 gram batch.

I was looking at the turnover recipe we used in pastry school, but it doesn't seem to indicate the size to cut the dough to. Other recipes seem to use about a 5x5 square.

[BakerAunt]

Exciting! Looking forward to more details as you use it!

[Mike Nolan]

I decided to go with a 500 gram batch of puff pastry to start, mainly because it's hard to get smaller batches of dough to work in my mixer. If I have to, I can split it up for final rollout. This should make around 10 turnovers, if I have the sizes figured out right. It'll depend on how the final rollout goes, Michael Suas's book says to roll it out to 1/8 inch, which is pretty thin.

My plan is to do the lamination this evening, let the dough rest overnight, then do final roll out, shaping and baking tomorrow.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Puff Pastry Party at Mike's!

[Mike Nolan]

It works about as well as I expected it to, it doesn't have the range of height and multiple or continuous settings that a bigger sheeter would have (probably including the larger model from Brod and Taylor), and that probably contributed to the dough sticking. Keeping the top floured seems necessary, but I remember having to do that when using a commercial sheeter, too.

I tried to do two turns without chilling the dough in between. Not a good idea. The dough stuck to the top roller. Cleaning it wasn't bad, though.

I think with a little more practice, it'll get a lot easier to use, which is consistent with what people who have used a clay sheeter for laminated dough rolling have said, and this is very similar to one, just probably a bit easier to keep clean. (Oh, dear, an excuse to make laminated doughs!)

I stopped after the 2nd turn to refrigerate the dough thoroughly, I'll try another turn later tonight, I don't know if I can get in a 4th turn, it depends on whether I still have discrete butter layers, which I probably won't know until I make something with the puff pastry tomorrow. (Even if the butter layers are messed up, it may wind up being like using blitz puff pastry.)

[Mike Nolan]

Well, here's where I stopped for the night. This piece is about 7 x 14 inches and assuming I'm understanding the settings, it is about 5mm thick. It needs to get down to between 2mm and 3mm for turnovers, according to Suas.

Tomorrow I'm going to try one more single fold to try to clean up the corners a bit, then do the final rollout, probably to 3mm. I've got some of my apple pie filling defrosting, I'll use that for the turnovers.

I might be able to tell something about the lamination layers when I cut it, but I suspect I won't really know a lot until after it has baked. But for a first try, it doesn't look bad at this point.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Mike Nolan]

I managed to get in two more single folds then rolled them out to 3mm and cut them into rectangles that were about 4x6. Each got about a tablespoon of apple pie filling, brushed with egg wash after sealing and sprinkled with a little sparkling sugar. They're very tasty!

I was worried I might have screwed up the lamination when making the turns, but the dough seems pretty forgiving.

For my first time with the new sheeter, I'm satisfied with the results. A littler practice and they'll look even nicer.

I posted one shot of a turnover in the weekly baking thread, here's a close-up shot where you can see the layering better.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Author]

Posts