Aero;
What kind of cooler are we looking at using? A reach-in cooler limits your options to sheet pans, while a walk-in cooler allows for the use of dough boxes or sheet pans. I like to use food contact approved plastic bags to cover the sheet pans as they can usually be reused a number of times, while Saran wrap must be discarded after every use. Both Saran wrap and plastic bags constitute a parasitic cost, while dough boxes, being more costly up front, are actually cheaper to use in the long term as there is no parasitic cost associated with them except for an occasional washing. In production, we typically don't need to wash the boxes after every use, we just scrape them out (they scrape out very easily) and reuse them. The sheet pans need to be scraped and washed after each use as the dough has a tendency to adhere to the metal pans, resisting all attempts to scrape them clean. Oiling the pans can alleviate this, but then you need to be very careful that the dough pieces don't skate around on the pan to form a cluster, you then end up with one large piece of dough on the pan on the following day.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
