Well today I went back over to the London Bread and Bake Company to make a massive batch of cookies. The guy”s there helped me out a bit, but not heaps. I had to scale up all the ingredients so instead of measuring out in grams I was measuring in kilograms! Used up two kilograms of chocolate!
I ended up making two different type”s of batches. One which was the larger batch was all chocolate chip cookies, both large and small sized ones. While the second batch was for the Jelly Bean cookies.
Once I got everything measured, and then mixed in a massive mixing bowl (about a quarter the size of me!), the dough then was flattened down to a more reasonable shape before using my cutters to cut it into the right sizes for the different cookie shapes.
However it was once we came to the oven that the problems arose. They had two oven”s there.. The first oven was a standard large bread oven (well they aren’t called the London Bread company for nothing!), however I know from previous experience that I can”t cook the cookies in an oven like that. The temperature is too variable and the cooking area is too large. The second oven was the only option. This oven was a walk in oven. Yes i”m serious, I could walk into the whole oven it was that big. The heating elements were on the side wall. Now after talking with one of the helpful guys there I vaguely understood him. (Most of the workers there were all from different countries that weren’t England, so there English wasn’t 100%) I tried to check if the oven had a fan within it, as that”s what’s required for my cookies… and from vague hand signals and telling me that the thing in the roof of the oven spins around I thought it was ok. However after I while I realised what it was. You load up a whole lot of trays and put them on this big tray holder that goes into the oven, in there it hooks onto this metal thing in the roof. Once the oven start”s it then turns the whole tray around in the oven.
So when I took the cookies out after the normal cooking time that I do for them, they were all white and standard dough looking, in other word”s they hadn’t really been cooked at all! Also nobody really seemed to understand the temperature that the oven was set at. Sigh. So when the baker guy that I was dealing with came back he took a look and said how they have to go back in for longer.. So back they went.. Of course how much longer he had no idea, oh and then he left!
So they were in the oven for probably three time’s as long as they normally would be. Once I took them out a couple of times.. I finally pulled them out when they were all brown and cookie coloured looking.
So they were the right colour, but they were then too hard because they had ended up being overcooked for a bit too long. This oven stuff is difficult, each place I go to has a different type and they all make quite a big difference to how the cookie”s turn out. It”s like driving a car and each time you drive it there’s a different engine inside, you have no idea if it’s going to be too weak or too powerful.
Still all a learning experience, but I don”t think I”ll go back there. But it did mean they I have approximately 100 cookies made and wrapped now!