Preparing for a market.... help?
Hey everyone, love the website, been following for a long time but never posted until now!
I love to bake bread, but I don't usually make huge batches of bread at once. I also don't use sourdough.... so I don't have much of a dough refresher... or whatever you'd like to say.
My expertise is Shokupan (しょくぱん), which is a Japanese milk bread. The market I am preparing for is next week, and I want to be able to make a huge batch of breads, and I would like to make the dough before and bake the DAY before. So if I can, I'd like to prepare the dough a week or three days before, or whatever amount of time I need to prepare the dough.
My recipe for this bread is as follows,
Tanzhong Starter:
1/3 cup (45g) of Bread flour
1/2 cup (120ml) of Milk
Dough:
300g Bread Flour
300g All Purp-Flour
250g Milk
130g Sugar
10g Yeast (I use 15-20g Fresh Yeast/Cake Yeast)
2 Eggs
5g Salt
100g Soft butter.
I usually let the yeast wake up/thaw, since I keep it sleeping in the freezer. I make the Tanzhong first, placing the flour and water in a pot and cooking on low to medium. Let it cool to room temp.
Make the dough next, by mixing milk, flour, yeast, sugar, eggs and salt. Once a dough is starting to form, add the room temp Tanzhong, then mix for (I use a kitchenaid stand mixer,) 5-10 minutes. Once the dough is formed, add the butter slowly, until it's all mixed and added. Knead for another 10-20 minutes, let it rise for an hour or an hour and a half. Mold, shape, whatever, let it rise a second time and then bake.
So, this is how my bread is made.... It can be used for stuffing anko (bean paste) or bbq pork, or whatever. It's a strong versatile bread dough, and delicious.
So, how can I make this in big batches, store it in the fridge let it rise and bake it the night before the market... I need quite a bit of this, haha. Thanks for all the help everyone.
I don't make anything like this so I am of no help. But, I would be interesting in seeing some picture of your しょくぱん and it's uses.
I'll see if I can find some!
Thanks for the pictures
My pleasure!
Is this Anko for the filling? Looks yummy!
Do you use the lid-on bread box for baking or stick with 山食？ Good luck at the market!
I stick with 山食, i don't use a lid. I'd actually like to get a deep bread box for baking, I want to make bread like this.... it's my dream! haha.
I wasn't aware that Japan had a bread culture - until now! I was under the impression that as a good portion of Asian people are lactose intolerant that milk would not be on the menu, but you learn stuff every day.
So it looks like a soft of milk/brioche type of dough, so here's my suggestion to help manage a bulk bake.
Firstly de-couple the dough making with the shaping and baking. You'll need a big fridge and lots of containers.
Calculate and mix up batches of dough in quantities that you can bake it all at once. e.g. if your oven can take 4 tins at a time, then mix up a batch for 4 tins worth. Let each batch rise, then degas the dough and put in the fridge covered. You can probably get away with up to 48 hours in the fridge this way. You can streamline this process by starting to mix up the next batch as soon as you've got the first batch rising before it goes into the fridge, so you're making a batch every (say) half an hour.
I'd bake the same day of the market if possible - that way it will be as fresh as it can be. I suspect this bread has a relatively short shelf-life/stales quickly.
Then on baking day, take a batch out of the fridge, shape it, transfer to tins and let it prove. Then 45 minutes later take the next batch out, shape it and let it prove. 45 minutes later the 3rd batch and so on. It may take 2 or 3 hours to prove once shaped out of the fridge - so allow for that, and you'll need as many tins as loaves you're baking & selling.
Then you have a 45 minute cycle between batches. Once proven, put in the oven and bake. Remove when ready and let the oven get back up to temperature. At the next 45 minute cycle put the next batch into the oven.
And just keep repeating that cycle until you're done. You'll need 3 timers, one to clock batches out of the fridge and one to clock batches going into the oven and one to time the batches in the oven. (you may get to the stage when you're both baking and shaping if you have enough batches and tins...)
I bake in batches like this. I start by working out when the last lot has to come out of the oven, then work backwards in 45 minute intervals to give me the latest time that batch needs to go into the oven. e.g. on a busy morning I want the last batch to come out of the oven at 9am, so 45 minutes back from that is 8:15 when it goes in. 45 back from that is 7:30 and 45 back from that is 6:45. I want the dough to prove for an hour, so it has to be on the couche by 5:45 so I need to start scaling & shaping the first batch at 5:30am. That's when the alarm goes off...
Until I get another oven and I can have another 45 minutes in bed!
-Gordon
It should be cut-and-pasted into every thread that pops up about small-scale bulk production.
I have just a couple of things to add:
First, you won't need to cook up fresh Tangzhong paste for each batch. It keeps for days, and you can mix it into the dough straight from the fridge - provided you adjust your liquid temperatures to compensate. Using Drogon's schedule, I'd just cook one large pan that covers the entire production cycle and keep it at room temperature. No reheating is needed. You only have to hit 65C once.
Second, Tangzhong bread keeps extremely well, so you could also shift part of your production cycle back into the previous day.
If you need them, there are lots of Tangzhong recipes on the forum. Plus lots of good advice. This link will lead you to many more:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32997/hokkaido-milk-bread-tangzhongThanks for the help everyone, it was a busy day, but I got it done. Bread turned out wonderful with an egg wash. However i didn't take any pictures, by the time I finished I was so beat and sweaty I took a shower and went to bed, haha. I'm still tired in fact!
I had a little trouble stuffing the bread with goodies, I'm not great at stuffing breads. I made a chocolate ganache the night before, and I stuck it in the fridge. Then I packed it in some bread, and it just leaked out everywhere, which I wasn't happy about, haha. But the next time I tried I froze he ganache and it seemed fine, hardly any leaks that time.
I'm not sure how to stuff buns properly, I dunno if I need a a ratio, like for whatever gram of dough to 10g of stuffing etc. Even when I do manage to stuff the buns, sometimes the stuffing gets pushed to the edge and the middle is just dough. Anyone got any tips I can try? Thanks all!