Expanded dough calculator question

[5thElement]

Can anyone explain to me why the weight of for example a 12 inch pizza dough, isn't equal to that of two 6 inch doughs?

Just went to make a 12inch and a 6inch....and thought i could just make a dough for an 18 inch, then split off the weight of dough a 6 inch was....but the figures didn't add up so i had to do them seperately..

Thanks

[Art]

One thing to keep in mind; as the diameter of a circle doubles, the area quadruples. Art

[Pete-zza]

5thElement,

As Art's post implies, the relationship is not linear. It is based on the squares of the radiii of the pizzas. For example, assume that you want to make a 12" pizza dough and a 6" pizza dough with the same baker's percents and thickness factor so that the only difference is the size. Let's assume a thickness factor of 0.11. For the 12" size, the amount of dough needed is 3.14159 x 6 x 6 x 0.11 = 12.44 oz. For the 6" size, the amount of dough needed is 3.14159 x 3 x 3 x 0.11 = 3.11 oz. As you can see, the dough for the 12" pizza is not double that for the 6" pizza. It is four times. The expanded dough calculating tool spares you from having to do the above types of mathematical calculations. All you have to do is tell the tool what you want to do.

One commonly used size pairing is the amount of dough for a 16" pizza. The dough for that size pizza can make two roughly 12" pizzas. It is actually around 11.3" but close enough for most people. Some pizza operators make their dough balls in multiple sizes and have ways of combining the different dough balls to make different size pizzas. See, for example, the PMQ Think Tank thread at http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?p=44360#44360.

Peter

[5thElement]

Thanks for the replies!

As soon as i posted the question i knew it must have been about the area of the circle, maths was never my favourite subject!

Thanks for the detailed explanation Peter, really helpful.