Tears in dough!

[LamsMekk]

Well hey!!! Where’s the coffee? Those look like some delicious doughnuts!!! Wow! You did great!!



Regarding regulating oven temp: if it gets a little too warm just open the oven door. Professional bakeries have temperature controlled proofers. Unfortunately home bakers have to wing it with the oven. There’s a company that makes a small home proof box, but it’s expensive. Brod and Taylor.





The bubbles: that’s blistering. Usually that’s caused by slightly cold dough or under proofed. You mentioned the donuts were a little flat. So you might have been a little under proofed.









This is a troubleshooting guide from a company that make commercial mixes. But most of the information is applicable whether you’re making donuts at home or in a commercial kitchen. if you have apple, you can hit the share button and copy it to your Books as a PDF. I don’t know how to save it if you have a PC.



Yes with the needing wants you make a few batches of dough you’ll get the feel for what is gluten develop. Don’t get hung up on the time, make sure you look and feel it. It’s important you understand what the dough looks and like and feels like when it’s ready.



But really congratulations you’ve made tremendous progress!!!



https://www.bakenjoy.com/wp-content/uploads/Donut-Trouble-Shooting-Guide.pdf


I have to say you and @Cahoot are two of the most dedicated bakers here. You both are making excellent progress in such short time.

omg I’m so sorry I’ve just seen this!!!!
I thought you didn’t respond!
Thank you soooooooo much that is really amazing coming from a professional!

I’ve made so many batches of doughnuts in a short space of time and really it’s so therapeutic!

Thank you sooooo much for all of your amazing and in depth advice!
It really means a lot

 

[LamsMekk]

T

@LamsMekk Your doughnuts look amazing!! I have to bookmark this thread for future use, there's so much good information and troubleshooting in here. Doughnuts are honestly one of my favourite foods, and when I start working with yeasted doughs I'm certain that I'll appreciate having this thread to reference.

Thanks so much!!

They’re so nice to make, and I have to say I prefer bread based things over cakes/cupcakes etc.

Its so much fun learning a new skill isn’t it!

 

[LamsMekk]

As you can see, I went a bit crazy with it all

 

[LamsMekk]

If anyone's interested, although they're not donuts, but I thought Bruno Albouze's recent croissant videos were nice examples of techniques that @Norcalbaker59 was talking about, namely not using any flour for the kneading process, and giving the DDT. Of course they don't go as in-depth as you may find from text sources, but I don't know many good baking & pastry YouTube channels, especially one that's as popular as his.

I’ve most definitely mastered the art of kneading without adding extra flour. You NEED a bench scraper and for overly wet doughs, a bowl to do a lift, stretch and drop motion.

I absolutely agree that there is sooooo much misinformation online regarding yeast based bakes. It makes me so upset when I see people throw so much flour on their worktop when literally you don’t need any AT ALL not even a sprinkle if you use your bench scraper.

 

[LamsMekk]

Chilling the dough is not so much about the temperature of the dough as it is about relaxing the gluten. If you do not relax the gluten you cannot roll it out without stretching it. There’s a difference between rolling the dough and stretching the dough. If you stretch the dough, it tears and exposes the sticky inside. Then you fuse the layers.

You can leave the dough in the refrigerator longer than 30 minutes. I’ve left it in as long as an hour between turns. The lower temperature inhibits the development of the yeast (for croissants) so it won’t hurt it to be in the refrigerator for longer than 30 minutes. Yes it definitely adds to the time for lamination. But lamination is not a fast process.

Freezing the butter makes it brittle and that’s why it’s not recommended that you put it in the freezer.

You want the gluten relaxed and the butter chilled but not so cold that it becomes brittle.

In the class that I took, which was taught by a master baker who won a gold medal at the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie in Paris, he told us the butter would shatter because of the butterfat content. And it did. It all pretty predictable.

Wow it’s crazy that even something like egg washing incorrectly can effectively ruin your croissant.

It always amazes because small points such as that are not even something that a novice baker would consider and so you would just be left trying to figuring out what went wrong most likely assuming that the issue is something much more complicated than it is!

 

[Norcalbaker59]

As you can see, I went a bit crazy with it all

Hahaha!! Okay what’s the name of your doughnut shop!!! Seriously, you mastered the dough in no time.

The problem with what you read on the Internet is untrained people simply copy and paste from other untrained people. Unless it’s a professionally trained pastry chef like Stella Parks, Dorie Greenspan, or Pierre Herme, I would triple check what you read against a training manual like Michel Suas’ book. Otherwise you end up wasting a lot of expensive ingredients, put in a lot of work, and end up with nothing but frustration for all your money and time.

Your doughnuts are amazing. You should be proud of yourself!!!

 

[Norcalbaker59]

Wow it’s crazy that even something like egg washing incorrectly can effectively ruin your croissant.

It always amazes because small points such as that are not even something that a novice baker would consider and so you would just be left trying to figuring out what went wrong most likely assuming that the issue is something much more complicated than it is!

Yes baking is very nuanced. That’s why it’s divided into bread bakers and pastry chefs. And within those groups bakers will specialize even further. There’s a bakery in San Francisco, Arsicault Bakery that is known specifically for their croissants. In 2016 Bon Appétit named Arsicault bakery the best new bakery in United States specifically because of Armando Lacayo’s croissant. He sells a couple of other baked goods, but basically it’s a croissant bakery. There’s always a line. And on weekends, they always sell out. Armando Lacayo, is French, and his family purportedly owned a patisserie in France, but Lacayo’s trained at Michel Suas’ SFBI.

 

[Norcalbaker59]

I’ve most definitely mastered the art of kneading without adding extra flour. You NEED a bench scraper and for overly wet doughs, a bowl to do a lift, stretch and drop motion.

I absolutely agree that there is sooooo much misinformation online regarding yeast based bakes. It makes me so upset when I see people throw so much flour on their worktop when literally you don’t need any AT ALL not even a sprinkle if you use your bench scraper.

Kneading without flour is probably the most mind blowing lesson for bakers. It goes against everything you read in cookbooks and see online. I know professional bakers who have been baking for years that still do not know how to knead without flour.

And the next lesson you’re going to learn and master is how to roll dough with almost no flour. You’re going to use just a little flicker of flour on the surface. It takes practice but trust me you’re going to get there.

 

[Cahoot]

As you can see, I went a bit crazy with it all

I'm not even exaggerating, when I saw those pictures I literally said "holy shit" out loud. I had to double check that they weren't from a professional bakery and you were just showing them for comparison or something. Bravo!! If you don't mind, what recipe for the dough did you use?

 

[LamsMekk]

Awwww thanks you guys!!!! That means a lot

I used both the recipe that NorcalBaker59 gave me which is amazing, the doughnuts are very pillowy and incredibly soft. I use this one for filled doughnuts.

For glazed doughnuts I use Micheal Lims recipe for ring doughnuts. I use a nice flour and fresh yeast which I see makes a difference because of the added moisture.
So what I do is activate the fresh yeast in 60 mls of milk from the 260mls that the recipe calls for and then when it activates it gives me more of a wet dough. I have used both types of yeast.
It will be very very sticky at first but keep scraping with your bench scraper and trust me it will come into a nice soft dough within 8–10 mins!

I don’t tell anyone what recipe I use but I can make an exception here

 

[Pam Amery]

Hi!
Can someone please help me .

it doesn’t matter how long I knead for I can never seem to get rid of the tears in the dough.
I’ve kneaded this dough bu hand for 25 mins and although it feels lovely and soft there are tears everywhere..

Any ideas on where I’m going wrong?

Many thanks in advance!

Over-kneaded dough will also tear easily; in under-kneaded dough this is because the gluten hasn't become elastic enough, but in over-kneaded dough, this means that the gluten is so tight that it has very little give. If you think you've over-kneaded the dough, try letting it rise a little longer before shaping it.Oct 4, 2011

 

[Norcalbaker59]

Awwww thanks you guys!!!! That means a lot ☺

I used both the recipe that NorcalBaker59 gave me which is amazing, the doughnuts are very pillowy and incredibly soft. I use this one for filled doughnuts.

For glazed doughnuts I use Micheal Lims recipe for ring doughnuts. I use a nice flour and fresh yeast which I see makes a difference because of the added moisture.
So what I do is activate the fresh yeast in 60 mls of milk from the 260mls that the recipe calls for and then when it activates it gives me more of a wet dough. I have used both types of yeast.
It will be very very sticky at first but keep scraping with your bench scraper and trust me it will come into a nice soft dough within 8–10 mins!

I don’t tell anyone what recipe I use but I can make an exception here

Oh you’re using patent flour. This flour is milled from the endosperm. So it contains the highest level of starch. This is commercial grade flour. When you make a vanilla cake, experiment with this flour. You’ll probably get a better result

 

[LamsMekk]

I have been and to be honest I’m still highly unimpressed with the cake recipes I’ve found online!

is there any specific benefit to using this in the doughnuts over regular flour?

For some reason I keep baking either stodgy or dry cakes which is very frustrating!

it’s just a recent thing though I don’t understand It

 

[Norcalbaker59]

I have been and to be honest I’m still highly unimpressed with the cake recipes I’ve found online!

is there any specific benefit to using this in the doughnuts over regular flour?

For some reason I keep baking either stodgy or dry cakes which is very frustrating!

it’s just a recent thing though I don’t understand It

If you are striving for a traditional donut shop donut then yes, you should continue using this flour.

When flour is milled the kernel is separated into three parts: bran, germ, and. endosperm.

there’s something called extraction rate, which is the amount of the bran and germ added back to the milled endosperm flour.

The higher the extraction rate, the more bran and germ added back. So wholemeal flour has an extraction rate of 100%. Meaning 100% of the wheat kernel was extracted to mill the flour.

As plain flour has about 72% extraction rate.

But going back to the milling, the endosperm is the part of the kernel that contains the most starch. Of course the endosperm doesn’t have any nutrients in it to speak of because it’s the starch part of the kernel. In milling this they refer to the milking of the endosperm as streams.

There’s four streams; it goes down in quality with each stream. Top patent and Second patent are the first two streams. Top patent obviously being the better quality as it has the fewest impurities. The endosperm has very little mineral content. This is referred to as ash content. You want to very low Ash content for pastry applications. But you want a higher ash content for bread.

So are you beginning to understand why the wheat kernel is separated into its parts and milled separately, then blended? In blending they’re able to better control the protein and ash content in the finished flour.

It’s in blending they are able to make other flours like bread flour, all purpose flour (plain), pastry flour, and cake flour.

The flour you use is actually blended with some vital gluten to give it more strength. A high starch, low protein purer form of patent flour would be weak. To ensure this flour can perform they added the vital gluten to give it strength.

If this company makes a pastry flour, without the vital gluten, I would definitely try it for cake. But I would try this in a cake recipe Just to see how it performs.


Cake is an art form to say the least. It falls in multiple categories:

Shorten:

• butter cake
• pound cake
  

Foam cake

• genoise
• sponge
• chiffon
• biscuit
• angel food

There’s particular mixing methods for each one as well as some general guidelines for bakers percentages. But I think the biggest problems with cake is bakers bake at the wrong temperature, use the wrong pan, and just over bake.