Achieving maximum output from your ingredients is critical for a bakery’s success. When it comes to yeast raised donuts, two essential ways to achieve maximum benefit is through the use of a high tolerant mix to get flexibility in your process and to have a dough cutting process that enables the use of every piece of dough.
Tolerant Mixes
Using a tolerant yeast raised donut mix, like Dawn Raised A®, provides a consistently higher quality of product while lessening the pressure for precise production by bakery staff. The biggest benefit with tolerant mixes is the production of less waste as it has the ability to perform under varying conditions including temperature, mixing and the proofing process. A customer can’t afford to have donuts that aren’t right every time, and tolerant mixes will achieve that for them.
With the responsibility of running a bakery, training staff, and consistently meeting customer expectations, it’s easy to over or under proof your mix or have a variance in temperature. With a high performing tolerant mix, a shift in either direction doesn’t affect the performance of the dough.
“A high tolerant mix is just as beneficial to a new baker that is working through their process as it is for a seasoned baker,” says Tim Busta, commercial technical director at Dawn Foods. “The ability to have a product perform under fluctuating conditions ensures they’re delivering a consistent product to their customer.”
The Right Cut
Elimination of waste in yeast raised donut production is another way to maximize a return on the ingredients purchased for the bakery. By efficiently sheeting and re-sheeting the dough during the cutting process, bakers can use every piece of dough and create products that achieve the texture that their customer desires.
“The tenderness of the dough after each sheeting guides a baker to the products they’re going to be able to create from that dough,” says Busta. “The benefit for a baker is they get maximum use out of their dough by reducing waste while delivering a variety of products to their customers.”
• First Cut: The initial sheeting of yeast raised dough is for cutting ring donuts, which is your most tender product.
• Second Cut: After gathering the scrapes, forming it back into a bundle and letting the dough ferment back up, the second sheeting is best for long johns and Bismarks because the dough is a little bit firmer from the first dusting of flour.
• Third Cut: As the dough becomes even more firm, the third sheeting is best for a bakery’s twists and Pershings.
• Final Cut: After the dough has been worked through multiple times, the final cut is best for fritters as it is more accepting of the extra sugar and moisture that comes from an apple filling, which results in a great tasting fritter
“From a technique perspective, the right cut provides consistent delivery of tenderness for a consumer and reliability for a baker,” continues Busta. “The recommendation for long johns and Bismarks to come from the second cut of dough is to avoid any rupturing or overflow when filling it with a nozzle. The integrity of a donut with that much surface area is key, and depending on how much filling you use in your donut will help dictate the tenderness requirement for your donut.”
