What factors affect the crust development of bread?
I'm trying to make cinnamon rolls and use a brioche recipe for the dough. The crumb itself is soft and flavorful, but I'm not particularly happy with the crust. After baking, the rolls come out with a crust that is slightly thick, slightly hard, and a bit on the darker brown side. It's sometimes a bit flaky, too. I'd like crust that thin and soft.
I'm wondering what factors affect the crust development so I can experiment with the recipe. Should I be looking at amount of sugar in the recipe? Hydration level (about 63% right now)? Amount of fat (recipe uses eggs and butter)? Oven temperature? Steaming the oven?
Any tips would be highly appreciated. Thanks!
Hi BN I see you are from NZ, probably best if you post your formula so we can venture a considered opinion.
i have made many dozens of cinnamon scrolls, in fact we used to make loads of them for the cancer councils fund raiser "Australia's biggest morning tea." We raised $800 dollars last time around.
The dough formula was as follows
flour 100%
salt 1%
sugar 12%
butter 6%
yeast fresh 3%
Turmeric 0.25% (cancer council colour yellow)
water 55%
fruit 50%
egg can also added but depending on the size of the dough what number of eggs to use usually i add at the rate of around 5% as i use whole egg rather than part there of.
i dont use any steam when baking a fruit dough, temperature is usually under 200 for around 20 minutes
A couple of recent bakes using the formula given
what size dough are you making and i can give you the ingredients required
Kind regards Derek
can you give us some more details of your recipe dont worry if you measure by volume
Sure i can give quantities, the advantage of using bakers percentage is that it can reproduce any required amount of dough consistently. I also always measure by weight for consistency.
So if you decided you wished to make 1 dozen scrolls at 100g each then you will require 1200g of dough.
if you refer to the formula and its percentages, you add all the percentages up and in this case that formula comes to 232.5%. including the 5% egg
Now you take the required amount of dough 1200g and divide that by 232.5 and we get the value of 1% which is 5.162--- so we round that up to 5.2g
so that given formula for 1200g of dough will be
Flour 100% x 5.2 = 520g
salt 1% x 5.2 = 5.2g
sugar 12% x 5.2 = 62.4g
butter 6% x 5.2 = 31.2g
fresh yeast 3% x 5.2 = 15.6g
turmeric 0.25 x 5.2 = 1.3g
water 55 x 5.2 = 286g
egg 5 x 5.2 = 26g
fruit 50 x 5.2 = 260g
As a double check add up all the ingredients and it comes to 1213g !
Method was to bring all the ingredients minus the fruit together and allow to rest for 10 to 15 minutes, then i hand mixed on the bench until the gluten was nicely developed. Fruit was then incorporated with several folds and roll ups. The dough was then set aside to prove, this took between two to three hours the dough was then knocked back (degassed ) handed up and pre-shaped into an oblong, allowed to recover for about 20 minutes rolled out and brushed with a boiled cornflour paste (gel like) liberally sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and rolled up . it was then cut into a dozen scrolls placed onto a baking sheet i use silicon paper as the sugar is inclined to cause sticking to the sheet. Another tip here is to place the two end pieces in the centre of the baking sheet with the cut side up (looks better) and also if you try to get the seams facing inwards just in case they havent been sealed well and try to unravel
I place the baking sheet in a large plastic bag (tent like) to prove. i prefer a full proof and then gently into the oven y at 190 and bake for 20 minutes. As soon as they come from the oven I brush them with a sugar syrup wash that i usually make up with the juice of a lemon and sugar zapped in the m/wave. In one of the pics caster sugar was sprinkled on top too.