Bakers Delight - Day 3

Day 3

Started the baking shift at 12.30 at a company owned bakers delight. Micheal Wright, Darren (baker) and myself produced 12 doughs to make the 65 products that I understand is the minumum. it was intersting that Micheal is still was very active in rectifing many deviations to standards such as cleaning, correct trays, recipe and bread specifications, ordering and dough production. He again said that it comes down to 80% recipe specification and 20% baker. This bakery was not that old and had more upto date equipment than the day 2.

Today was a practical follow up from day 2 and was able to question Mick on the comments and questions from Rob and Dean Tilden. His responce was "testing was done on a tipical bakers delight enviroment which would include spiral mixer & airconditioning and that 10c was demmed the best starting temperature. But bakers should be testing doughs for FDT and ajusted thier dough to achieve a FDT of 28c. He strongly agreed that baker apprentice should be able understand this cocept when learning the fundamentals of baking at TAFE".

My call on this is from my own experiance including my 2 weeks RTI with Stewart Latter, there is a massive eliment of experiance that the baker uses to know when to ajust water temperatures to achieve optimal development and FDT. When working with Stewarts baker they produced a monster load of bread and not once did he check the dough with a thermometer. But one mistake in FDT in that operation would cause big broblems due to the large production, the dough maker was very expereianced . He also learnt these skills on the job.

Mick and I also visited anouther bakers delight that operated a genisis plant. It was interesting because we were hoping to go in and see it operating but it had broken down during the morning and they were very late with their production.

Regarding Dean t's question about the sugar in white doughs Mick said " we dont need to put sugar in our white doughs for yeast activity because we use a good bread improver and only use sugar for softer products such as soft rolls and sweet doughs".

Rob, I am going to ask Micheal to respond to your question regarding the different absorbtion rates of water to the seasons, but for my own benifit maybe I can ask you a question because I did not know this.

Does the flour producers that supply bakers delight control the protien strength, water absorbtion rate, ash content and quality by mixing grain from different growth areas within Australia and if not why?

Do flour millers test there flour to make sure that it can supply a large company like B/D, brumbies, Woolworths with the same standard of flour anually?

If there are ajustments to be made to absorbtion rates due to sesonal crop quality that lead to flucuations in FDT does the BRI or flour companies notify the baking industry to make these ajustments?

Gary maybe you could forward this blog to Manildra or Goodman Fielder to see what they say?

To answer Craigs question yes I did see the presentation for the slicer and belive I have this in my bundle of resourses that were collected.

One of things that I learnt today was the late addition of fat in the sweet dough, hidration of fruit 10% water and how important Michael's job is to this organisation. On the three days that I spent with Mick he was constantly on the look for product and procedures, very aprochable and gave costructive critisism straight away and constantley refering to the recipe book. I think the role that Micheal plays is critical to maintain quality and support within the store.

On that note Id like to thank Micheal Wright and Craig King for letting me access so much imformation, resources, expiriance and answering my many questions, it really was a window into your organisation. I will continue to corispond with you both in regards to soul baking and any development of learning tools made from the resources collected.

Again thankyou to those that made comments and asked questions and I look forward to futher corrispondance with you all.

Regards
Dean