Spent $340 on a pastry sheeter and it sat in my garage for 5 months

I run a small cake business out of my house in Sacramento and last spring I got it in my head that I needed a dough sheeter to speed up my puff pastry orders. Dropped $340 on a used one from a bakery that was closing in Fresno. Got it home, realized it weighed about 90 pounds, and there was no spot in my kitchen for it. It sat in the garage under a tarp until October. Then I finally cleared a corner and tried it on a batch of croissants. It cut my rolling time from 25 minutes down to about 4, and the layers came out way more even than doing it by hand. Last month alone I used it for 11 orders and made back the cost plus some. But I still wonder if I could have just practiced my rolling and saved the money. Anyone here buy a big piece of equipment before they actually had a spot for it?

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carter.hugo13d ago

Hold up, practicing your rolling would not have gotten you the same result. Hand rolling is a skill, sure, but it has a limit. You can roll croissant dough by hand for ten years and still get uneven layers, because the dough warms up and sticks while you work it. A sheeter does it in one pass with cold dough, so the butter stays put and the layers stay flat. That evenness you noticed is not from you getting better, it is from the machine being faster than your hands can warm the dough. So the $340 bought you something practice alone could not.

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