Production

Chili Cheese Rolls Formula in Baker's Percent: Corn Scald and Poolish

By Robert Roessler, Food Scientist · Published 14 November 2026

These rolls are made with a scald of corn semolina, a poolish and chopped chilies, and are topped with cheese. The home recipe splits the ingredients over three parts. For production you need one overall formula, so this page adds everything together and shows the maths.

The formula

The overall formula adds the poolish and the optional sourdough to the main dough. The flour is 500 g of wheat flour (type 550) plus 100 g from the poolish plus 17.5 g from the sourdough, 617.5 g in total. Water is 250 g in the scald, 100 g in the poolish, 150 g in the dough and 17.5 g from the sourdough, 517.5 g in total. Hydration is water ÷ flour × 100 = 517.5 ÷ 617.5 = 83.8 %. The corn semolina, 100 g, is 16.2 % of the flour weight. With 13.5 g of salt, 9 g of fresh yeast (8 g in the dough and 1 g in the poolish), 30 g of butter and 15 g of honey the dough weighs 1,302.5 g.

Scaled to bakery batches

How the numbers are calculated

1. Add the percentages. 100 + 83.8 + 16.2 + 2.2 + 1.5 + 4.9 + 2.4 = 211.0 %. Total dough weight is always flour weight × 2.110.
2. From the dough you want to the flour you need. Flour = dough weight ÷ 2.110. For 14 rolls of 90 g you need 1,260 g of dough, so 1,260 ÷ 2.110 = 597 g of flour.
3. From the flour to each ingredient. Ingredient = flour × percent ÷ 100. With 597 g of flour: water 500 g, corn semolina 97 g, salt 13 g, fresh yeast 9 g, butter 29 g, honey 14 g.
4. Pieces from a batch. 10 kg of flour makes 21,100 g of dough. At 90 g per piece that is 234 pieces.

You can do the same with the baker's percentage calculator: enter the percentages above and tick flour and liquid.

Decoration

Decoration is part of the formula. The recipe is only complete with the cheese on top, so the cheese belongs in the recipe and in the costing. It is not part of the dough weight or the baker's percent above, and in many bakeries it is forgotten in the costing.

• Cheese slices: many bakeries buy the cheese pre-cut in slices, in different thicknesses and sizes, and choose what suits the roll.
• Look: there should be enough cheese on the roll, and a little of it should run down the left and right side in the oven. This gives each roll its own look, a handmade look rather than an industrial one.
• Chili flakes (optional): they need something to stick. Either dissolve them a little in oil, or spray the cheese-covered dough piece very thinly with water and then scatter the flakes on top.
• Seeder: toppings such as seeds can also be applied by a seeder, a machine that scatters them automatically when the tray is moved underneath. Every line that makes buns has one, and many large bakeries use them.

In the bakery

• Pre-doughs: the corn semolina is scalded with boiling water and kept in the cooler, at least overnight in the home recipe, and cooled down completely before it goes into the dough. The poolish ripens for 12 to 16 hours at room temperature. A small amount of sourdough is optional.
• Dough temperature and mixing: a dough temperature of 22 °C, as for other rolls, set with the mixing water, with flake ice instead of water if the water is too warm. Use only crushed, slightly crumbly flake ice, never hard ice, which damages the dough structure and the gluten network. In a Diosna mixer, 2 minutes slow and 8 minutes fast. The chilies go in at the end and are only mixed in briefly.
• Adding the cheese: the cheese goes on the dough pieces at half proof. Some bakers put it on the unproofed piece. It can also go on after the proof, but that is delicate, and many bakers and staff have problems with it.
• Cheese quality: use good cheese and do not save on the price. Part of the cheese can also go into the dough, which improves the quality of the rolls. The best cheese for this roll is Edam.
• Baking: bake at 220 °C, as for other rolls, for 16 to 25 minutes depending on the oven, with 2 to 5 litres of steam. Steam routine: give steam in the first minute, then pull the draft and let the steam escape. The rest of the baking time runs without steam. This applies to rolls and breads alike.
• Piece weight: 80 to 100 g per dough piece.
• Cooling: let the rolls cool a little before you handle or pack them. The starch network is not yet stable while the crumb is hot.

Things to watch

• The corn semolina is not counted as flour. The flour is the wheat flour only, so the water of the scald counts in the hydration while the semolina is shown as its own line.
• The optional sourdough is counted as 35 g (the middle of 30 to 40 g) at 100 % hydration, so it adds 17.5 g of flour and 17.5 g of water. Salt is counted as 13.5 g, the middle of 12 to 15 g.
• Chilies and the egg are not part of the dough formula. The cheese for the top is in the decoration table. The amount of cheese inside the dough has to be found by trial.
• Weigh salt and yeast on a scale with a suitable resolution, especially for small batches.
• Most common faults in the bakery: dough too warm; waited too long; proof too long, so the pieces over-proof; dough pieces handled again and collapsing; wrong oven temperature; steam forgotten; baked too long, so the rolls are dry or too dark; rolls handled straight after baking; cheap cheese, or cheese put on after the proof by staff who are not used to it.
• Dull surface: dough too warm, trays or proofing carriers dusted too heavily, a dry proof, or too little steam. Keep the dough cooler, dust less, raise the humidity in the proof and give enough steam.
• Hollow, pulled-in bottom: proof too full or baking temperature too low, especially when baking on paper or foil. Load a little earlier and raise the temperature.

Sources

• King Arthur Baking: Baker's Percentage (professional reference)
• BAKERpedia: Baker's Percent
• Wissensforum Backwaren: Fehler bei Brot und Kleingebäck und deren Beseitigung (Detlef Reineke, 3rd edition 2009)

Information current as of 14 November 2026. The formula is a starting point and needs your own trials with your flour, mixer and oven.