Thin crust pizzas often require a watchful eye and gentle handling on the line.
Because pizza styles vary so widely — from a low-moisture dough for a cracker-like thin crust to a high-absorption thick crust — bakers must be mindful of how gently they go at the process.
Mr. McIsaac has noticed an uptick in lower-absorption and colder doughs as pizza commissaries seek versatility.
“This demand challenges equipment producers because stiffer doughs still need to be divided gently,” he said. “We pride ourselves on the ability to configure our Vemag divider to handle doughs ranging from those that are less viscous, like gluten-free, to the stiffest doughs.”
On a sheeting line, thin-crust pizzas often require a watchful eye and gentle handling.
For doughs formulated without chemical improvers, feeding from the hopper to the dough chambers requires gentle handling.
“A thinner sheet has a tendency to be more fragile and require more precision in the sheeting process,” Mr. Moline observed. “When it’s thinner, it’s more susceptible to tearing.”
Moline sheeting lines come equipped with automated sheet tension monitoring for the entire line.
“At each sheeting station, we can equip dough sheet tension monitoring that will make automated small adjustments to prevent the sheet from tearing,” Mr. Moline said. “For instance, if it sees the sheet stretching, it can speed up the system incrementally, starting with the sheeting rollers.”
For these low-moisture crusts, gentle handling also affects the dough consistency, Mr. Riggle said, so matching the machine to the dough type is vital.
“Because of the amount of force that builds up when sheeting down to 1- or 2-millimeters thick, you can get a lot of deflection on the rollers, and that can result in an inconsistent weight, and it will only get exaggerated the thinner you go,” he observed.
What’s more, handling the dough too aggressively doesn’t just hurt the product; it could damage the machine, too.
“These forces can cause premature bearing failure and drive failure,” Mr. Riggle said.
Likewise, for high-absorption doughs — the ones typically getting the fermentation time — the line must be designed to carefully handle a softer product.
“You don’t want to spend all that time and money pre-fermenting something for two or three hours only to run it through a production line that will knock the gas out of it,” Mr. Riggle cautioned. “You want a low-stress front section and a sheeting line set up so that it doesn’t damage the dough.”
Many pizza lines are equipped for gentle handling of doughs with all levels of hydration.
“Fritsch’s main focus is gentle sheeting with a minimum of treatment for the dough to keep its structure as much as possible,” said Uwe Betz, technical sales, Fritsch. “In some cases, an inline folding unit with a bypass is integrated to influence the internal structure of the dough.”
Stuffed crusts can also require special treatment. To address challenges that come with maintaining dough characteristics, Handtmann offers forming solutions and extruding technology with its dividers.
“Handtmann equipment can handle cheese and other products at a very cold temperature,” said Cesar Zelaya, bakery and sales technology manager for Handtmann. “This minimizes the migration of water to the dough and maintains the ideal shape of the cheese through the stuffing process.”
Sometimes, it’s not only the crust type but also the formulation that calls for gentler handling, such as with crusts created without chemical improvers.
“These formulations can present challenges for producers, so Handtmann dividers can adjust several variables such as feeding from the hopper to the dough chambers to minimize stress on the dough during dividing,” Mr. Zelaya said.
