Guy Allan Davis is a certified Master Chef who has developed his
own artisan breads, and bread doughs that go directly from the freezer to the
oven without any loss of quality.
He developed the dough, he says, “to provide a fresh product
throughout the day, and reduce lower wage costs and increase profit margins.”
Guy Allan Davis is also a specialist with laminated dough. Laminated dough is
a technically complicated type of dough that produces hundreds of flaky, airy
layers in baked products. A good example of laminated dough is that which is
made for puff pastry and croissants. It is made by a process of folding butter
into dough many times, in order to create thin and alternating layers of butter
and dough. The folding and rolling process of creating laminated dough also
helps to develop the dough’s gluten.
“As you might imagine, there
are many factors affecting successful lamination – dough temperature, butter
temperature, resting time, rolling technique,” said another laminated dough
specialist. “But with a little care and patience during the process, the payoff
is a unique lightness and airiness that results from the thin sheets of butter
steaming in the oven and puffing the dough. In the case of yeasted laminated
doughs, the payoff is even greater: Leavening with yeast results in an even
airier crumb, with small, irregular pockets.”
In making laminated dough, the
dough is folder over butter, and then rolled out again with an ordinary rolling
pin. The more times this is done, the more layers of butter and dough are
formed. Guy Allan Davis is one of the few who are skilled in this practice.
