Pizza Math Continues
March 8th, 2010I Need a Diesel Mixer
I can’t help fiddling with pizza-production methods, in order to make things work more smoothly at my church.
Today I did some calculations and came up with a recipe for about 220 ounces of sauce. That will knock twenty minutes out of a typical day.
I wanted to find out what size mixer I would need to make dough using an entire 25-pound bag of flour. The answer? In a vertical cutter mixer, 40 quarts. In a planetary mixer, 60 quarts. A good used planetary mixer runs $3500. Used vertical cutter mixers are hard to find.
It turns out Bosch makes a very good bargain for pizza chefs. The Bosch Universal Plus mixer with a stainless bowl will allow me to make dough for 14 pizzas at once. It will take nearly nine pounds of flour. That’s not too bad, for the $440 price. That would get me down to two batches of dough per day, which beats eleven.
I’m not sure why anyone buys a Kitchenaid mixer. I wouldn’t touch one with a ten-foot calzone. The capacity is low. They’re not durable. They’re messy. I don’t get it.
A dough sheeter would be great. I could fire the dough into it, mash it into oiled pans, and be done with it until it was time to bake. I just need to find one that costs under a hundred dollars. Hey, maybe if I plant some magic beans, they’ll grow into one.
I suppose I could get clever and glue a 9 by 12 frame to a plastic cutting board, dump the dough into it, and roll it out until it more or less fit. That would save time.
I don’t want to lose the hand-forming. I just want to reduce it to a minimum. It doesn’t matter what shape the dough is when it begins to rise. If it’s nearly the shape of a pizza, it will make the job go faster, and it won’t hurt the quality. It would probably improve the dough by reducing the mashing and trauma.
My cheese frustrations continue. I might go ahead and buy a loaf of provolone and see how hard dicing it is. If I can do it in half an hour at home, it will obviate the need for a slicer, and I’ll be able to use cheap cheese from now on. I may also make a pie using only provolone.
I want to start cranking out thin pizza, but unless someone shows up to help, it will never happen.
Last night my old man took me out for dinner, and he said it sounded like it would not be possible to turn the cafe into a serious business. It’s hard to make people think about money when their big goal is saving souls. He thinks I should learn what I can and then open a place.
The pizzeria I visited turned me off because they said they grossed $600-$700 on a typical day. I thought that represented a lot of work and very little money. Now I realize their business was slow. That figure probably represents 40-50 pizzas. I churned out over 20 by myself, with bad equipment. With decent equipment, one cook could easily do 60 pies a day.
That little shop should have been able to produce 24 pies an hour, more or less.
Let’s see. Say I do 24 pies an hour, and the food cost per pie is $3.00, and I sell them for and average of $13.00 (more like $14.00 in practice). That gives me $240.00 per hour to pay for rent, gas, power, and so on. A place with a more realistic floor plan would be able to make 72 pies per hour, so $720.00. Surely a decent place with two full-size double ovens could make $3000 per eight-hour day above food costs, before talking about toppings and soda. That’s over $70,000 per month. You would think it would be possible to make a living.
Whoops, I’m wrong. Their oven holds 12 large pizzas, so figure 48 pies an hour, at full tilt. Two of the larger ovens will do 128 an hour. So you would think you could do maybe $5000 per day, after food costs, if your pizza was good enough to attract customers. Did I misplace a decimal somewhere? Seems like you should be able to survive.
I must be underestimating the impact of the slow hours.
Tomorrow night I cook again. I’m going to do my best to be ready to produce 20 pies over the course of one service. I’ll experiment with the provolone, and I’ll get a container suitable for the big cheese recipe, and we’ll see if things speed up. Maybe I can get them to round up an assistant to spread the cheese.
Better head to GFS.
March 8th, 2010 at 3:45 PM
The only problem with your Pizza Restaurant math is that you would probably have to be there every hour of every single day unless God gave you a wife or some other “hands on” business partner you could trust to allow you to go home or on vacation every five years without also causing the wheels come off the operation or kill someone with food poisoning.
Talk to any good restaurant owner and you’ll understand that the best always virtually live in their business 16 hours a day.
That said, you could start up and kill yourself for two or three years, build the clientel and bottom like making a small salary, then sell for a huge profit and run far far away I guess…
( I have a 6 quart Kitchenaid at home I bought because the 5 quart models are so lame, but I only run about 1/2 of the published capacity unless I want to have to bring my shop vacuum into the kitchen when I’m finished…and as you have learned one or two amounts of Pizza dough spends all of it’s time wrapped around the top of the dough hook.)
March 8th, 2010 at 3:48 PM
The Bosch has a stellar reputation for durability and longevity.
March 9th, 2010 at 6:22 AM
Kitchenaids not durable? You’re kidding right? They’re basically, miniature Hobarts. Admittedly the cheapo one they currently the sell(5 quart “Artisan” model – the 6 quart Pro model is a significantly better machine) is complete junk, but the rest of them? My Mother has been using the same K5 series for close to 25 years.
And oh, you might be interested to know – the Bosch is the type that spins the bowl right? Well, Cooks Illustrated test of Mixers immediately failed all the bowl turners, because they couldn’t do dough all that well. Honestly, it sounds like you need one of the Smaller Hobarts(like the C-100 10 quart model) for your church. It’s just gonna cost you like a grand – but then, you’re half way there with the price of the Bosch.
March 9th, 2010 at 7:58 AM
No, I’m not kidding at all. I researched it. I didn’t ask your mom, but I did learn that Kitchenaids have plastic gear casings and cheap gears. The Kitchenaid I use IS a Hobart (unlike the ones they sell now), and it slows down with batch of dough made with four cups of flour. It’s pathetic. People on the pizza forums routinely complain that their Kitchenaids smoke when fully loaded with dough.
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The Bosch has a failure rate below 1%, it will allow me to use fourteen POUNDS of dough, the motor is twice as powerful as a Kitchenaid’s, and it has been tested by pizza chefs all over the country, so whatever Cook’s Illustrated says about it can’t be taken seriously. I very much doubt they failed this model, given the uniformly positive reviews it gets from people who actually use it.
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You should also consider the fact that I’ve made many, many batches of pizza dough, and I have some clue what my needs are. I don’t want to burden you with the details, but virtually any mixer that will get all the flour wet will work for me. I’m not looking for a machine that overmixes dough so you get tiny, uniform English-style gas pockets. I know a lot more about this than you do. You shouldn’t assume I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t write everything I know on this blog.
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As for whether the bowl turns, you tell me. I just checked the performance. I didn’t look at the engineering drawings.
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It’s easy to show up and write a blog comment based on wild guesses, but I’ve been researching this for days.
March 9th, 2010 at 9:53 AM
Well, my Kitchenaid does dough well (I admit, I only do one at a time for myself). But I couldn’t beat the price (free).
I’m going to try the Cuisinart when I recover from the ick that my grandkids gave me.
Elizabeth
Imperial Keeper
March 9th, 2010 at 10:32 AM
Steve,
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If the fancy purchased machines don’t cut it, you could always head to your shop and… (cough) modify the gearing
🙂
March 9th, 2010 at 12:27 PM
Sometimes I worry you don’t factor in the lazy tastebuds of average America. We have, actually had because one closed, two really good private pizza places in our little podunk town, both delivered and yet I couldn’t guess at the number of times I’d pass a Papa John’s car coming down my street on my way home from work.
It would be impossible not to be aware of these two places in my small town. So what could account for such a thing?
March 9th, 2010 at 12:29 PM
It’s a valid concern. On the other hand, I’ve mentioned it myself, so I don’t think you need to worry that I’m not aware of it.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:03 PM
That Bosch mixer looks nice-I especially like the design of their dough “hook”-more like a claw, really.
I think the thing about Kitchenaids is really that they look pretty more than anything else. To be fair, they can perform some tasks that are beyond basic kitchen mixers in a half-decent fashion but really, I think that’s about it. I mean, I get good dough out of mine (which is the so-called “pro” model) but it’s taken a good deal of tweaking to get there and I have to do some babysitting at the beginning to get all of the flour mixed in properly. It would be easier for me to use the food processor method on a pizza by pizza basis but I like to make two or three doughs at a time and let them sit in the fridge to develop a little flavor. Between that and one-time cleanup I stick with the mixer but there’s no way in heck that I’d buy or recommend any Kitchenaid specifically for making dough because their price point is high enough to make it more than worth it to move up to a better mixer.
One of these days I’m going to crack the case on that thing and see if the whole plastic gears thing is true or not…
March 9th, 2010 at 1:07 PM
I checked Cook’s Illustrated. The Kitchenaids sell fairly cheap. The Hobart they tried sells for $1850. So the idea that a new Kitchenaid is a Hobart is not too credible.
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My guess is that when Hobart stopped making them, Kitchenaid kept the Hobart-looking outer shell and replaced everything else with Mexican pot-metal guts.
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The one I use was made by Hobart (according to the label), but it’s still not a good mixer for my needs.
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The complaints Cook’s Illustrated had about the Bosch are not problems for me. They said the lid held moisture in; that’s a huge plus for me, because my dough dries out, and things fly out of the bowl. They also said the mixer didn’t mix stuff in the middle of the bowl perfectly. Not an issue with pizza dough.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:10 PM
Hey, I wonder if a Krups ice cream maker would make dough. I should fire mine up and see.
March 9th, 2010 at 4:56 PM
I forsee a dough mixer/extruder patent in your future.
March 9th, 2010 at 9:57 PM
Steve, it just occurred to me that the thing you have going for you in your little slice (excuse the pun) of your Church’s fellowship and outreach to the community is not the money you can make for the church or even really delivering the perfect pizza.
Realize that the people who could be helping you in your Pizza kitchen really don’t have to have a carry permit or be able to pass the bar exam or get a degree in Physics, so why not put those who are trying and attending your church but are in trouble in life into progressively more responsible positions…a few at a time…and see what they do with the challenge and mentoring.
You are, like I am, a perfectionist, and perfect pizza is admirable goal…But (but not Butt)……..
And as hard as it is for me to admit this…and I can clearly see it looking in from outside…imagine what else you can do for others in the process of trying to make “perfect pizza” (something I want to do each and every time) for your fellow church members to enjoy in between and after services. Any cash generated would be a bonus prize over the value of taking people off the un-employment rolls by virtue of working with you a few days a week and gaining skills making them employable citizens.
A good friend of mine down on the Georgia coast–an older independently wealthy gentleman who was a recovering alcoholic–actually financed and started up a community/church based culinary training kitchen which not only fed the hungry coming in off the street for free, but also sold food to those willing to pay before and after their programs and services.
The business model is already in existence in Savannah and now Brunswick, Georgia for going on over ten years I think.
And pay the customers happily did to fund the effort, but their expressed primary purpose was to take people who were previously “un-employable” or otherwise under employed and teach them how to cook and handle themselves in a restaurant environment.
Just one man’s thoughts…not really a message from our God…
March 10th, 2010 at 9:48 AM
If I’m not making extraordinary food, there is no point in showing up. Anyone at the church can make bad food and counsel teens and street people, which is not really something I’d be good at, anyway. This kind of stuff is vital work, but not everyone was created to do it.
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I have a lot of other things to do at the church, so if they ever decide they don’t want really good food, I’ll quit working at the cafe.
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As for donating a slicer, the church already receives my cash donations and decides what to do with them, and they haven’t chosen to buy a slicer yet.