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Mastering the Art of Frozen Baking

June 23, 2020 | 15:40
It's more than just sticking the products in the oven

 

Pristine Frozen Bakery products bring a lor of convenience and simplicity to your bakery and cafe.  

 

 

However, there are some vital points that you need to keep in mind while using the frozen baked products.

 

Look no further for a curated set of Tips and Tricks shared directly by Matthew Allan, General Manager of Frozen Bakery!

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Oven

The ovens we use for all our product development are fan forced commercial quality ovens and the times we state for each product are a guide only as they reflect our ovens.

Given there are many different types of ovens, the oven you use will have an impact on baking temperatures and time.

In general, a deck or non-fan forced oven will need to be increased by up to 10°C and the baking time increased by 5%. Please keep an eye on your product when you bake for the first time to ensure you adjust accordingly!

 

oven

Oven fullness

Are you baking one tray of product or three or maybe even ten trays? Is the oven full of the same product or multiple products where the door will be opened a couple of times during baking? Has the oven come up to temperature first?

 

The fullness of your oven will influence your baking time and the oven temperature. If you are baking one tray, the recovery time to bring the oven back up to temperature and full force will be faster than if you had 10 trays where the door will have been open longer and the cold product will suck the initial heat out of the oven. 

Always bear in mind that an oven with a small amount of product (1 tray) will generally bake up to 10% faster and hotter than a full oven.

 

Baking temperatures and times

As a practice, you could pre-heat your oven hotter than the temperature you will be baking at, as once you open the door you lose a vast amount of heat. Always have your trays loaded and ready to go in so you can minimize the heat loss. You can turn the oven back to the desired temperature once you have loaded your oven.

 

Baking in general is a 3-step process

 

 o   The initial jump or oven spring (height)

Depending on the product you are baking, it is often a good idea to increase the temperature for the first 5-10 minutes so you can get great oven spring. This is especially important for muffins, croissants and bread where the first few minutes will determine the product volume.

 o   The main baking period

This is where you are baking the internal body of your product. You want it baked inside and not dry or under-baked. For the likes of muffins, croissants and bread, try to bring the temperature back down to normal so the inside is baked without too much colour.

 o   The finishing

This is the part of the baking process where you focus on your external appearance! You can do this by dropping the oven temperature down by 10°C for the final 5 minutes so you can focus on finishing it off, perfecting the colour for breads or pastries and the crust. If baking crusty bread or croissants, open your vent to let the moisture out and dry it off, if you do not have a vent try placing a towel in the oven door to wedge it open a bit. The crust difference will be noticeable.

 

Perfecting the Chewy American Cookie

Last but not the least; be mindful of baking times and temperatures when baking Chewy American style cookies. Nine times out of ten, you will think they are under-baked and give them a couple more minutes and you will end up with a biscuit rather than a cookie. The product is still edible but it loses its softness, chewiness and uniqueness.  

 

Can’t wait to try it out yourself? Check out our entire range of Frozen Baked goods available for you here.


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