I have been baking for quite a while now and while I’d say my skills have advanced a lot, I still am in awe when I pick up things like this fruit danish from Tous Les Jours and their products are perfectly even golden brown on every surface. I can’t achieve this even with my Anova Precision (convection) oven. What’s the secret?
by ohhod
30 Comments
It’s the oven. Some pastry shops have rotating convection ovens. They can roll an entire speed rack with sheet trays of pastry on them into a giant oven, then while baking, the oven rotates the speed rack continuously.
So rotation plus convection plus commercial oven that maintains its temperature (unlike most home ovens), and you get really good even browning.
Professional ovens, that’s how.🤷♀️
It’s more learning how to bake and adjust to your environment. So many places make great desserts and pastry in old kitchens with equipment that has seen better days. It’s about consistency, and correcting along the way because there is no way to make sure everything is perfect.
I have worked in places where the oven isn’t great, and I’ve worked in places brand new with new ovens and you have to make it work. Those ovens do go down for some time and you still have to get product out.
You can also get great results baking at home, if you know what you’re doing and understand ingredient purpose and the process.
Egg wash is sprayed on vs brushing
In addition to what others have said, if you make 100 pastries and 4 of them are iffy you can put those aside and use them for cake crumbs, etc.
Part of it is knowing your oven. Does it run hot? Run cooler? Any hot spots? Are you frequently opening to door to check? (Depending on how long you take, it can change the temperature by a few degrees)
If you’re using an egg wash (key for that beautiful browning) you need to make sure it’s applied evenly – don’t miss any spots! It’s tricky to do without potentially adding too much egg wash in spots.
Volume. That’s all. I baked in a restaurant for 14 years. I started my day making 16 loaves of bread. A typical day I made 2 chocolate cakes, 2 carrot cakes, a cheese cake and a chocolate cheese cake, 12 pies. All from scratch. You get the idea. After a couple years they all come out very consistent
We have perfectly even browned croissants at my bakery and I will tell you it’s not because of our ovens or our egg wash. Our ovens are terrible and don’t rotate on their own and we don’t spray our egg wash.
But I won’t tell you how we achieve it because.. I don’t know 😂 I don’t work with doughs or croissants.
Professional ovens. It’s not you.
Spraying egg wash on and using a professional convection oven.
i literally love tous les jours so much😭 i’ve been wondering the same because i’m a new baker and i know i have a lot to learn but sometimes things like that surprise me
steam and fan in the oven
Even the commercial convection ovens can be inconsistent. I’ve worked with dozens of them, and they all have unique hot and cold spots. The bonus with this is that you can bake different products that require different temps in the same batch if you learn your oven’s quirks.
It’s the ovens. They’re calibrated to do this.
spraypaint
Lots of mentions of pro level ovens, which is true. But, there’s also professional bakers there too.
These people are paid to do it. They’re better than you and have better equipment… usually.
Pro ovens… and experience. Like knowing the first batch you turn (if not rotating oven) at 9 minutes and pull at 12 but the rest you rotate at 7 and pull at 11.
Plus a lot of home cooks don’t preheat their ovens correctly.
Convective heat, or dome heat. Deck is from the bottom, dome is from the top. Residential ovens are bad at this.
(Although if you’re careful with a torch and a lazy suzan you can get some pretty results without a ton of effort.)
Convection ovens and good brushes
Industrial convection ovens. That and rotating the tray’s half way through baking
Convection oven
Looove Tous Le Jour! Yumm
Their ovens can go up to 500° easily. Plus convection. Take a class at the King Arthur Baking School if you’re in the area!
Convection oven
People don’t like to give credit to the person baking, it must be the equipment. This person has probably been doing this 40+ hours a week for a long time.
It’s while any skilled trade looks effortless while coming out better than if struggling at it for 4x as long
Experience and a commercial kitchen
I would suggest trying out amylase, it’s pretty affordable on amazon and you only need a couple grams depending on what you’re making
https://www.amazon.com/Amylase-Enzyme-Formula-1-lb/dp/B01N9NQYQR/
With a very, very expensive Combi Oven.
Industrial ovens
Witchcraft.