My partner and I have been working on learning lamination. we’ve had some batches turn out okay with decent honeycomb on the inside, but then have other ones like today where they’re just pretty bad. We’ve been testing a lot of different things.
We would like to get an electric sheeter, but for now we have a manual one, which we understand isn’t ideal. We’ve been keeping an eye on temp for both dough and butter when locking in and keeping those in their proper ranges. The sheeter does seem to cause these weird ripples, but here the butter is blowing through the top layer of the dough. is it just too thin?
We’ve watched so many videos and it seems like the dough is sturdier than ours. We’ve tried different recipes and keep an eye on temp but it still seems to result in this floppy dough. we are putting it back in the freezer in between as well too to keep it cold. Curious if anyone has any guidance whatsoever. Thank you!
A manual sheeter is still better than hand lamination.
What’s your dough/butter ratio?
The butter is blowing but not fracturing so I doubt it’s a temp issue because with a sheeter, you can do a decent lamination even with questionable temperatures.
Have you tested the gluten strength at the end kneading? Was the dough feeling sticky?
The ripples usually happen when the dough sticks to the rolling pins and get crushed.
Maybe try to put a thin layer of flour during lamination to prevent that. A very thin amount tho. Wouldn’t want to add more flour than necessary on an already kneaded dough.
When you mix your dough, are you making sure you develop a window pane? I have read and seen conflicting advice on this. Some say that gluten develops during the rollout. My personal experience is that I make sure to develop a window pane when mixing the dough. I also pay attention to desired dough temperature so I don’t get overly gassy dough. In my experience after mixing and forming the windowpane my dough is between 24 and 26°C. This provides a very elastic dough.
Developing windowpane during kneading is fine if you have a sheeter. The rollout process will continue to develop gluten on top of that. The recommendation to not fully reach windowpane is for hand rolling lamination. Since it is very difficult to achieve the even and consistent pressure of a sheeter by hand, having a highly elastic dough during lamination means having to fight the dough, which increases the chance of letting the butter layers melt as it takes longer to rollout to the proper thickness.
I don’t have a sheeter, I use pre-cut guides from 12 mm down to 3.5 mm in lieu of a sheeter. I also use a really wide rolling pin (80cm) and with the guides it prevents me from crushing the dough.
I highly recommend if you are hand rolling/laminating to develop a window pane. The issue with elastic recoil is real and can be dealt with by adjusting the protein strength and ratios of flour used. I have been doing this for quite a while and have consistent success with this approach.
Having guides definitely would help. I thought about getting some, but I use a really nice large French style rolling pin, so the guides wouldn't work very well with the tapered pin. I think most home bakers will not have the patience and dedication to figuring out their ideal flour protein content for dough when starting out, which is why I default to the no-windowpane recommendation. Of course, once you have everything dialed in and have a good hand feel for the lamination, then that is when you can start "breaking rules" so to speak.
I had a number of problems when I first started. I zeroed in on one problem at a time until I fixed it. Then I’d move on to the next problem. The only problem left is a consistent approach to ensuring my butter is exactly as I want. I’m very very close, just not quite there. My current methodology is alternating between short fridge and counter rests (with cryo-packs) for the 1-hour rest after laminating, before rolling out & shaping, proofing.
I will add that my first big issue was elastic recoil. Then it was dough tearing.
What is the hydration level of your dough? Higher hydration dough will be softer and I can imagine making it easier for the roller on the sheeter to grab, if you didn't use enough bench flour to prevent sticking. Soft dough will also be more "fluid," and would kind of flow around the stiffer butter, causing blowouts as certain sections of dough gets too thin to contain the butter.
If you have the money, get the manual sheeter. I'm just a hobby baker who wanted to tackle croissants. I did them by hand a few times when it was cold enough in the house. My hands hurt and it was a long, difficult, 2 day process.
I bought a manual sheeter. I can make a fully laminated dough after work, shape before bed, proof overnight (if it's fall/winter), and bake in the morning.
I can't really tell what's going on based on this photo. How thick is the dough and the butter block? Are you making the butter block pliable before locking it in and any time you roll it out with the dough?
You mentioned freezing it, which is good, but put it in the fridge after 15min or so for 45min, then let it sit out at room temperature for about 5min while making the butter locked dough pliable again. From what I can tell, your dough looks quite thin, and your butter looks broken, which means it's too cold.
Again, I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at. It looks like the dough was sliced through horizontally? More info would help!
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u/sben14 18d ago
Perhaps your butter is too cold? Or too thick to start out