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Heard a bakery owner say butter temperature doesn't matter for laminated dough
I was at a baking supply shop in Portland last Tuesday and overheard this guy telling a new baker that cold butter vs room temp butter makes no difference in croissant layers. I've spent years being super careful about keeping my butter at 55 degrees exactly for laminating. Is that old school thinking or is this guy just passing on bad shortcuts? Has anyone else tested this themselves with real results?
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susan6491mo ago
so my friend jenna actually tried this exact thing last month because she forgot to take her butter out of the walk-in and she was already behind on her puff pastry. she made two batches at the same time, one with super cold butter straight from the fridge and one with softened butter she'd left on the counter for a few hours. the cold butter batch came out with those nice defined layers that actually puffed up tall and even, but the room temp batch was a flat greasy mess that barely had any separation between the layers. she said the dough itself looked fine going into the oven but the butter just melted into the flour instead of creating steam pockets. honestly i think that bakery owner is either lying to skip a step or he's never actually paid attention to his own results. the temperature thing is not some old school myth, it's basic science with fat and steam.
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faith_king29d ago
Yeah, that's pretty damn convincing.
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