[chefpeon]

Well, obviously the maximum temperature in which you're working, 26C (78F) isn't suitable for laminated doughs. You've determined that. 

The real question is, is it POSSIBLE to bring the temperature in kitchen down by turning up the air conditioning? And would your employers even be willing to consider that? It's costly. I'm guessing that cranking up the air conditioning isn't a reasonable solution here. 

It may be possible to do laminated doughs in your present temperature environment by changing the way you do things. Do you have a walk-in cooler? Or any refrigeration with room to work? My suggestion, first off, would be to refrigerate EVERYTHING. Before you even start mixing. Your mixer bowl, the hook/paddle, your flour, the butter/shortening, the yeast, etc. Your liquids should be ice cold. If your recipe tells you to warm the milk or whatever, ignore that, because it's not going to hurt anything. Put your dough back in refrigeration at every opportunity. Work quickly when it's out at kitchen temp. Do you have to roll by hand, or do you have a sheeter? If you roll by hand, keep your pin in refrigeration too. It all helps. If you have room to work in a walk-in cooler, you might want to consider doing your "turns" inside the walk-in if possible.

Just keep it in your head to start everything cold, work quickly and keep it cold. It's a reasonable place to start. 

Cheers......Annie

 

[chefpeon]

How is the humidity there? It could be that high humidity is causing your dough to stick to the sheeter, but it also could be that you are starting out with a very wet dough

or you may not be using enough flour for dusting as you do your turns. Have you tried being a little more liberal with the dusting flour or reducing some liquid content in your dough?

How experienced are you in doing laminated doughs? Is it something you've done successfully before at other locations and you're just having trouble at this particular location?

Are you using recipes that you're unfamiliar with? Are you required to use those particular recipes?

 

[chefpeon]

Yes, @panini brought up a good point......gummed up scrapers on the sheeter make using it kind of a nightmare. It's also pretty easy to install them wrong on some models. Has it been taken apart and cleaned recently?

I'm kind of stumped at this point as well. Your original post mentions that the air conditioning brings the kitchen temp down to 26C, but now it's not working at all? If the outside temp is 34C, does that mean it's hotter than that in your kitchen? If so, I'd see why you're having trouble. 

Your original post says that you've recently started working at that location. Was someone there before you that had this task of making up the laminated doughs? How was their product? Are you the first person to try making laminated doughs there? 

Also, you say the last batch of croissant was less flaky than it should be; can you directly attribute that to temperature and humidity in the kitchen, or could it be something else? Like perhaps a one-time mistake like mismeasuring ingredients, or expired yeast, or lower-quality ingredients, or giving the dough too many turns, or over-under proofing. With labor intensive things like laminated doughs, a lot can go wrong at different stages of make-up. It could be that the kitchen temp isn't the (only) problem.