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flour power
finally!!!!!!!!
since i arriving here in march i have been working on our viennoiserie and for one reason or another a well laminated dough has been out of my reach. many of the reasons involve me experimenting with different flours, butter and mixing/fermenting techniques. when all failed i went back to what i know and started from the beginning… plugra butter and general mills harvest king flour. this was the combination i was taught almost ten years ago at sfbi by jeff yankellow… who to this day remains my bread hero.
sysyco, giustos, con agra and rocky mountain milling are a few of the brands of flour i was playing with. all of them had different amounts and quality of protein. the protein in the sysco flour was not of a good enough quality to develop enough strength. next step was to add con agra high gluten flour to improve strength. never cared much for high gluten flour…. still don’t. after playing with the mix of the two flours i got the strength and development right, elasticity became the new problem. played with poolish, autolyse, mixing times and folding techniques. there was progress but nothing achieved the lamination i was looking for.
too strong
too weak
too weak
too strong
giustos keiths best became the flour i moved onto next. after having played with it a little, memories of using it in the past came back. it is a quality flour but too strong for my interests. finally found a distributor for my old friend harvest king… it actually was not that difficult, i just had to ask. strength, extensibility and a good price… done. i could have used it back in the beginning of all of this but as i have said before… success is a poor teacher.
much better……
Tags: croissant, dough strength, flour, laminated, viennoiserie