Dough conditioners vs. dough enhancers
Hello all. I know that this is a touchy subject for some, but I'd like to reintroduce this question. To preface my question, a little bit of context:
I am a recent member of this site, but have been baking on an amateur level for nearly ten years, purely as a hobby. Within the past five years I've been moving into the cottage food industry, selling dessert loaves at local farmers markets. I've also sold sandwich breads on the rare occasion, and am trying to move more in this direction. I have tried different recipes for about three years and now have a repertoire of five breads that people seem to like, but the main problem for my customers has been shelf life (am I right??). My booth focuses mostly on educating customers about what non-store bought bread looks likes, tastes like, smells/feels like, etc. Despite this effort, my customers want an additional 1-2 days out of my loaves (my bread currently gets 2-4, depending on the loaf).
To address this popular request, I'm considering dough enhancers (natural, such as lecithin, ground ginger, or Apple cider vinegar), or dough conditioners to improve the texture and shelf life of my loaves for the market. My time line is usually as follows: prepare dough 2-4 days before market and store appropriately, depending on the bread; bake and package the day before market; deliver loaves immediately, or sell the following morning at market. Can anyone suggest some good resources on the subject of dough enhancers vs. conditioners that clarifies the difference between the two, which methods would be better for different loaves, and how the proper quantities? I know everyone will have varying opinions about this topic, but I'm open to all suggestions and credible resources.
Thanks so much for your help!!
without the expense, or customer distaste for, additional ingredients. It's quite common for me to have levain (sourdough, if you prefer) breads that are still enjoyable to eat a week after baking, so long as they are protected from drying out.
If your customers are storing bread in their refrigerators, you can educate them that this practice is one of the fastest ways to cause staling in bread, even though it may slow down mold development.
Paul
Soybean oil?
then you can use yeast water as a natural non sour leaven and get the 1-2 days extra life out of your bread. It takes a couple of weeks to make just like SD. Great for sandwich breads and you can mix it with a tiny, little bit pf commercial yeast, or poolish, kicker if you want too
the natural fermentation route to longer shelf life. Also a bit of whole flour instead of purely white flour could help a bit as well, and proper storage on the customers part is important.
It is unfortunate that you are already facing the question of compromise that usually comes with higher volume production baking. It is important for you to remember as well as for you'r customers to remember that you aren't making supermarket bread, you are making the good ole fashioned stuff with a small list or perishable ingredients that they can probably pronounce the name of. If they want supermarket bread there is probably a Walmart packed to the gills with the stuff right down the street and they may be better off shopping there. I imagine they aren't asking the other venders to artificially improve the shelf life of the veggies/cheese ect.
I agree you can't be all things to all people.
Gerhard
Glad to see another doing it - I'm guessing you're in the US though.
However my input here may not be that helpful as I've spent the past ~13 years living in an area of the UK that thrives on selling/promoting the organic, low processed, fresh, etc. foodstuffs and that's my own aims when baking.
The only think I could suggest is more education - promote that your products are premium, hand-made and no-where near the highly processed shop-bought breads. If your bread already lasts 2-4 days then I think you're doing OK. My sourdoughs stay usable (as bread) for 4-5 days when stored in a bread bin, (probably longer if I plastic bagged them) It's the toaster after that! I've never seen them go mouldy either - hard as rocks 2 weeks later though, when accidentally forgotten... (and even then, it was ground up and put in the freezer as breadcrumbs!)
I'm not even sure store bought bread lasts 6 days here though. One issue is that it's got to stay relatively moist for the duration to help prevent staling (although its not just about humidity - there's a lot more to 'staling' than that), and that will encourage moulds to grow. Storing in the fridge sounds like a good idea, but lower temperatures increase staling, so it's lose/lose there... Bread actually stales slower at higher temperatures, but then moulds thrive, so again lose/lose..
So short of concocting the chemical soup to add into your dough...
How about making smaller loaves and encouraging your customers to buy 2 and freeze one?
Write a book on 101 ways to make toast, or "My grandmothers favourite bread pudding recipes", etc. ... ;-)
Or sell part-baked loaves, frozen that your customers could finish off in their own ovens? (That might take some experimentation to get right but it's what a lot of shops over here do in their in-store bakerys, aka "Tanning Salons") The down-side to that is that you really need a blast chiller and flash freezer to stop the baking process and get the bread frozen as soon as possible when out of the oven.
A quick search for commercial anti-staling solutions turned this up:
http://www.google.com/patents/US3111409
and another thread on TFL too:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/26875/chemicals-prevent-bread-staling
gets a bit long, but lots of good stuff if you pick it out.
-Gordon
Thanks all for the great tips and suggestions! I look forward to researching these ideas.