Hi Everyone,
I have a bagel store in Shanghai. The flavor of our bagels is fantastic! I'm now trying to optimize the proofing time and temp. We have a factory that rolls our bagels then flash freezes them. They arrive at our store frozen. Prior to baking we put the frozen bagels into a retarder/proofer. I've tried various temps and humidity. Initially we retarded them at 4 degrees Celsius for 6 hours then proofed them for 1 hour at 30 degrees Celsius with 80% humidity. At this level the bagels were over proofed. I tried decreasing the proofing time but ended up with similar results. Now we are retarding them at 10 degrees Celsius and and skipping the proof (10 degrees celcius is cold enough yet warm enough to retard and proof). The bagels are better but are heavy and tough.
I'm also getting spotted, brown patches on my bagels. I read to use cooking spray (pam) prior to proofing to help eliminate this. Any ideas how to trouble shoot this?
I'm now revisiting the proofing time, temp and humidity. I've read online to retard them at 4 degrees Celsius then proof them for 40mins at 24 Celsius with 62% humidity.
Does anyone have suggestions? Your response will be much appreciated. Thank you. Dave
Hello Dave, Welcome to TFL. Like most members, I am a home baker who has done some freezing of dough but not often enough to have answers to your bakery questions. I am surprised that the factory that produces the frozen bagels does not supply you with detailed instructions so you get the best results from their products. Generally professional bakers do extensive test baking in developing formulas for mass produced products. As to your problem with brown spots, my first thought is incomplete mixing but that seems very unlikely from a factory produced dough. A bagel shop in Shanghai is very intriguing, and makes me wonder what your best selling bagel flavors are. Best of luck in finding the answers you need.
Well unlike rice bagels are very rare in China. The factory we partner with we developed the recipe together. This is their first time producing bagels so we are doing test day by day to optimize - check us out www.boomboombagels.com. If interested. Best sailor is sea salt or everything with smoked salmon.