Howdy y'all...I'm trying to figure out an alternative to a Dutchess Dough Divider. I need to spool up production of my 8 ounce loaves, but can't afford the $1000 of a Dutchess or clone, and I'm about as fast as I am going to get with a bench scraper and digital scale. My batches are typically 30 to 40 pounds of dough.
Does anyone have any ideas on any custom built methods or old school methods to quickly divide batches of dough? Are there any manual "die cut" kind of things I can use? Something I could build or have welded up?
My dream is to buy a Dutchess and sheeter/roller...and a very large make table.
Thanks,
Chris
For scaling dough I would suggest using a balance scale rather than digital, with a little practide it will be much faster than digital.
Gerhard
I find that using a lowrider digital scale makes for much faster dough dividing. Also keep in mind that some digital scales are faster to respond than others. A scale such as this would be great.
I fail to see how using a balance scale could be faster, to the contrary and less accurate if you are trying to work quickly.
cheers and speedy dividing to you
daniel
When using a digital scale you will have to look at the display and interpret what it means, using a balance scale you receive tactile feed back and you instinctively know to pinch or add a bit. With a digital scale no feedback other than the display slows you down. If you have ever worked in a production environment you know that the scaling is done quickly and if it takes longer per loaf it matters.
Gerhard
I've found when dividing a lot of dough, the most time is used adjusting each cut - adding or slicing off that extra 20 grams or whatever. Repeat that for every cut, and it adds up.
I've wondered if a binary pattern would work best. Something like this:
So, same number of cutting steps, but maybe it would be easier to be accurate? Now that I've typed this out, it doesn't seem like as good an idea.