If you have a restaurant, it’s clear that some pieces of equipment are more important than others. For fast food restaurants, it will likely be the deep fryer. For southwestern restaurants, the skillet takes center stage.

 However, what’s the most important piece of equipment for a bakery or pizza place? The dough sheeter takes center stage. The dough sheeter is an amazing piece of equipment that allows you to take large amounts of dough and manipulate it for your needs. Below, we’ll go into what it is and how to effectively clean your commercial dough sheeter.

What Are Dough Sheeters?

A dough sheeter is a piece of equipment typically used by pizza places and bakers to make large quantities of dough for the public. It’s also called a “pizza dough sheeter” because it tends to be a staple in most pizza establishments and bakeries. While handmaking your customer’s orders gives it a homemade feel, having a bigger establishment with a wider customer base can overwhelm the process. That’s where professional dough sheeters come in. They can help you with all your professional endeavors.

How Does It Work?

It’s simple. The baker puts the dough that they manipulate between rollers, which compress it. There should be more than one roller there that’ll rotate the dough and compress it into whatever shape you need it to be in. Before it can come out, it passes through a gauge roller or conveyor belt. This reduces it to the right consistency and thickness. Finally, you can shape the dough in whatever way you need it to be. Overall, it’s a versatile piece of equipment and can turn different batches of dough into one continuous sheet.

Why Use a Dough Sheeter?

When you use a dough sheeter, your dough will always be high quality. Luckily the dough makes production standardized. No matter how much your customers love your food, some batches may have a different texture and thickness if you do it by hand. Since the whole process of baking is so delicate, it may come out tasting different from your previous batch. Furthermore, everyone makes mistakes, which can cost you more time and effort to rectify them. Instead, you can expect all your dough to come out with the same consistency and texture profile. Your customers can rest easy knowing that your batches taste the same daily.

You also have more control over the materials you use. You didn’t just create the recipe, but you’ve also effectively controlled the manufacturing process. Dough sheeting is efficient, so you can optimize the process of how much dough you produce for your business. The dough sheeter has something for you, whether you have a small or large business.

Benefits of a Dough Sheeter

You can’t deny that commercial dough sheeter machines are efficient and effective ways to shape multiple sheets of dough. They’re better than using a rolling pin and manipulating the dough into your desired shape by hand. Doing this entire process by hand is going to tire you out. You’ll spend more time making dough on the clock or after hours. Why do this when you could get a dough sheeter?

It’ll save you both time and effort in the long run, and you can spend more time working with your customers. This is important because they rely on your attentiveness to get them what they need. The more tasks you can automate in the kitchen, the better. Overall, getting one is an excellent choice to complement your business needs.

As stated earlier, it reduces your workload significantly. It saves you time overall and lets you stay customer-facing. You can even teach your employees how to use it, and instead of taking forever to make one sheet of dough, you can make the dough in minutes.

Even better, sheeting can handle any dough texture and thickness. Even better, you can do many other tasks while this process continues.

Maintenance Tips

Know the signs that your commercial sheeter needs maintenance. If your belt is fraying, your machine could have a tracking problem. In that case, you need to replace the belt. However, be careful doing this on your own. If you try to go the DIY route, you could end up doing more harm than good, especially if you get the wrong belt.

Sometimes your machine requires professional maintenance. For example, if you hear deep grinding or loud squeaking noises, pieces of dough and caked flour have gotten so deep inside your machine that you can’t get to them. A pro will have to disassemble the machine and see what the problem is.

This is a key point when effectively cleaning your commercial dough sheeter. Ensure you determine when you can fix the problem on your own and when it’s time to get back up. You’ll have better peace of mind if you can make the distinction.

Cleaning Tips

Because commercial dough sheeters perform their designated function over several hours, you may find debris caught in many of the moving parts. This can cause delays, performance issues, or full breakdowns. Unfortunately, you must disassemble your dough sheeter carefully to clean it. Follow these steps to clean your sheeter.

Swipe any excess flour from the blade’s surface using a dry brush. The roller can get full of flour, so wipe it down with a rag if this happens. You have to clean scrapers too, so take them off and clean them. Inspect your blade and make sure you have a relatively sharp edge. If it looks worn down, get a replacement. Do this with the top and bottom scrapers, and you’ll be home free.

There are a ton of screws where the scrapers are, and sometimes the chain under these screws can rust. Get some machine oil to keep that chain functioning at maximum capacity so that it won’t malfunction when you least expect it. You might even see the rust drip off when you do this, so ensure that you also wipe that away.

Overall, cleaning your commercial dough sheet doesn’t have to be hard. Now that you’ve read this, you should understand what a dough sheeter is and how it best operates. We hope you’ll take this guide to heart and shop with Pro Restaurant Equipment! You’ll be happy you did.