Croissants - opening up more

Profile picture for user kendalm
kendalm on 9 Dec 2017 at 15:55
Seem to be getting more spring in these guys with each bake (save for the occassional step backwards). This batch probably would have sprung more had my lower deck not collapsing today causing the oven door to only partially close. That also became apparent with the onset of billowing smoke thanks to one kouign amman hitting the oven floor and caramelizing all that sugar into a nasty plume - cant complain though its always exciting to see improvement :)
A little trick I discovered about a month ago while reading an article about a baking competition which is esoecially helpful for small batches such as 500g flour as the starting point. Rather than fold every time you can slice the sheet and stack. Doing so minimizes the amount of non-laminated areas where the folds occur. With small batches this is a significant portion of the sheet. So in this case I do a normal double turn followed by a simple turn where the simple turn is not folded but rather stacked. This can be seen above. Despite my lamination being a bit on the cold side - as can be seen by some excessive cracking of the butter, note the second shot from the top of the series photos is a standard double turn and the third from the top is a simple turn stacked as opposed to folded. The result is that ends (on the left and right will contain all the 12 dough layers (as is the case with this folding method)

I really like keeping track of your progress! Although I cannot think on how to improve on this last batch!

Now exactly what happened with your oven? The oven shelf fell down? I thought I was the only one with that problem! For some reason, one of the racks is a tiny bit shorter than the others and the weight of the pots while baking will cause it to come off the runners. Not fun when you are dealing with screaming hot pots. 

You're not the only one ! So the two lowest slots will no longer hold the rack its as though the entife oven l is slightly wider. Its not that the rack is shorter, it seems to be the oven itself is slightly warped (verified this by exchanging racks). As I was about to shut the door I slid in the second lowest rack loaded with pain aux cbocolates and one kouign amann and right side just collpses. Shut the door knowing full well that trying fiddle with things would like result in burns as well as a wasted batch and of course the door is not fully closed. Butter and sugar os now oozing everwhere - just a bit of a disaster of course I am pissed coz I know precious heat is not going where I want it to go. I suppose these home ovens are not fully up to the task of constantly baking things with heavy stones and improvised steam mechanisms. This poor little oven has probably passed its intended limits - before I started getting interested in breads I baked pies religiously and even killed my kitchen aid few years back ao it not a surprise the oven is begging for mercy !

Do you think placing bricks on the sides of the oven floor and the placing the rack on top of that would solve the problem?

Dan

use two shelves to bake 6 loaves at once. As it is, my bottom shelf is just sitting an inch or so above the floor of the oven. It isn’t on any of the tracks, just wedged along the curvature at the bottom. As long as I use the right rack, in other words not the one that is a smidgen smaller, things are good. 

Your idea might work for Kendalm though. 

Probably work for me but since I usually only use two shelves, I can use # 2 a,d #4 and just let #5,6 empty.  Btw I can always recognize your thumbnails - lots of beautiful huge loaves ;) 

Actually, the loaves aren’t huge. The photography makes them look bigger than they are. My loaves are usually between 650 and 775g depending on the amount of add-ins.