The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Synthetic vs Metal rollers (Dough sheeter)

giyad's picture
giyad

Synthetic vs Metal rollers (Dough sheeter)

Hello,

I'm considering purchasing a new dough sheeter for my business.  I currently have an Acme MRS11 with metal rollers.  My dough hydration is around 50%, and dough does tend to stick to the metal rollers.  The plus here is that I can scrape the metal rollers with a metal scraper or plastic scraper to get the stuck dough off the rollers.  On a synthetic roller, I may damage them by scraping dough off.

I called Somerset as I'm interested in purchasing the CDR-1550, but they provide the option for synthetic or metal rollers.  I spoke with them and they said that the synthetic rollers are better for sticky dough with higher hydration, and metal is better for dryer dough with lower hydration.

Can anyone recommend for 50% hydration which I should go for?  Are there any other reasons I would choose synthetic over metal, and vice versa?

jimbtv's picture
jimbtv

I am sure you will get some good responses there. We just had a long discussion on aluminum divider plates.

 

Jim

gary.turner's picture
gary.turner

How do you define 50% hydration? I have difficulty seeing that dry a dough sticking to anything.

gary

drogon's picture
drogon

My croissant dough comes out to about 60% hydration and has no problems going through the ancient manual hand crank metal roller sheeter I have. I have slightly more issues with my pasty pastry but that's mostly due to the quantity of lard & butter in the pastry. It's liquid hydration is 40%.

I'd be interested to know what dough you are using though.

-Gordon

giyad's picture
giyad

I mix bread flour and pastry flour, about 14kg, and then water is 7kg.  The dough is not very wet, but it does tend to stick from time to time to the metal rollers.

@jimbtv, bbga seems to be a paid site.  I don't see a free forum.

gerhard's picture
gerhard

If it is sticking to the rollers I think the dough is being forced through too small a setting.  I know if we were trying to push things through we would get tearing and stuff on the rollers.  What we did was prepare the dough pieces a few minutes before sheeting by flattening them by hand and then using a rolling pin to get the piece down to a height of 2 to 3 cm.  It would then run through the sheeter with no issues 3 or 4 minutes later.

Gerhard

giyad's picture
giyad

Thats all great guys, but I was actually wondering if anyone knew the technical differences of why someone would pick one set of rollers over the other?  If anyone has experiences they can share about synthetic rollers, how long they've had them for, if there was ever any issue or maintenance needed, that would be great!