Whether you’re running a restaurant that serves a variety of food or a bakery that specializes in pastries, there are essential tools you need for working with dough to guarantee quality. Without the use and proper application of the necessary equipment, your dough may turn out less than ideal, whether that means your bread has the wrong texture, your pastries are the wrong consistency, or your food items are under or over-baked.

How you prepare your dough and what tools you use have a significant effect on how the final product will turn out. Additionally, having the appropriate tools will decrease the possibility of food waste and increase the quality of your establishment’s food.

Preparing Dough

Your pastries and baked goods all start with preparing the dough. How you prepare your dough is the foundation upon which you build the rest of the food; if there are any faults with your preparation, it will show later when you begin baking.

Dough Mixers

Mixing your dough is where the process begins and dictates the consistency of your dough. This process is essential to distribute the yeast evenly throughout the dough and get it as smooth as needed.

Increase Speed and Uniformity

While you can mix the dough by hand, having a commercial dough mixing machine available will increase the productivity and quality of your product. Mixers can come in a variety of sizes with multiple attachments to fit your needs and provide faster and higher-quality results.

Dividers

Your dough can have a nasty habit of sticking together and losing its shape if left out for long enough. It would help if you took precautions to mitigate the loss of shape long enough for your dough to make it into the oven. Having dividers on hand can preserve the look of the dough and prevent multiple doughs from mixing if you keep them on the same pan.

Sheeters

Eventually, you may have to roll out your dough and flatten it to the appropriate size before you can continue with your baking. Like mixing, you can stretch your dough manually with a rolling pin, but doing so is often inefficient and can cause unnecessary physical strain. Dough sheeters can streamline the process by stretching out the dough to the size and shape you need without causing you to exert yourself physically.

Proofing Dough

Once your dough is the size, shape, and consistency you want, you may need to proof the bread to give it the moisture it needs to bake properly. Proofing creates a hot and humid environment for the bread to absorb the moisture in the air, giving the bread a soft and fluffy quality once fully baked.

Issues With Not Proofing Your Bread

Without proofing your bread, its look and quality will suffer. The bread may appear flat and unfinished, leading customers to think it has gone bad or that you did not cook it properly. Your bread needs to look presentable to sell, and customers won’t buy bread that looks like it is unsafe to eat.

Over-Proofing Your Bread

The opposite problem can happen if you leave bread in the proofer too long. While the proofer injects moisture into your bread dough, it can also make it too soft and malleable. Over-proofing results in bread that becomes too soggy to handle or bake. Trying to bake over-proofed dough will result in misshapen and overly soft bread.

Baking Dough

After you have sufficiently mixed the dough and adequately proofed it, you will need to determine how to best bake your bread. There are several different types of ovens that you can choose from, each having pros and cons that make it appealing. You can determine the type of oven you need by the bread or pastries you’re making or the space that is available to you in your kitchen.

Convection Oven

This is the most common oven you will find in a kitchen, as it can handle most general baking needs. Convection ovens can quickly bake a wide variety of different food items, including loaves of bread and pastries.

General Use

Due to their general application, convection ovens may not have the specialization that you require. If your kitchen only offers pastries and loaves of bread as a side dish or dessert, you may not need a more high-tech oven. But if you own a bakeshop where the main draw is your baked goods, you will have to invest in a more advanced model to get the most out of your product.

Rack Oven

Rack ovens offer a large compartment in which you can place an entire rack filled with dough; these types of ovens can bake large quantities of baked goods at once. There are some models that come equipped with a steamer to add a little more moisture to your dough right before baking. Still others have the ability to rotate racks for more even baking.

Space and Expense

Rack ovens offer great utility to bakeshops but can often come with a heavy price tag—both to purchase and install—and can take up a lot of space. You need to determine if this option is financially feasible and if you have the space necessary to house such a large oven.

Deck Oven

Deck ovens specifically handle the baking of artisan bread; these ovens can make the crust of your bread crispy while maintaining the soft bread inside. If your establishment specializes in bread, beck ovens can be a boon in the baking of bread, as they give your product a higher quality taste than other ovens can offer.

Specialization

As previously stated, deck ovens are ideal for establishments specializing in bread, but they are less than ideal for most other food items. You need to consider if you make enough bread to justify the space that a deck oven will take up.

Make Educated Purchases

There are many tools restaurants need for working with bread, but not all of them may apply to your business. Know what your demands are and what the best equipment is to answer those demands. You can invest money into a high-end oven, but if your patrons aren’t there for your bread, it may be a drain on your finances and a waste of space.