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Watch your sponge, I lost 3 full sheet pans of croissants last Tuesday because of one
So last Tuesday I had a big order, 12 dozen croissants for a cafe downtown, and everything was going fine until the final proof. I grabbed my sponge to wipe down the bench and left it sitting right next to the trays while I ran to grab more flour. Come back 20 minutes later and all 3 sheet pans had this sour smell and the layers were collapsing, turns out that sponge had been sitting in old dough water since Sunday. I lost the whole batch and had to tell the cafe I couldn't deliver. Now I keep my sponges in a bleach bucket far away from the proofing area. Has anyone else had a sponge or rag mess up a proof like that?
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barbara_lane5516h ago
The sponge wasn't really the problem, it was the old dough water it was sitting in. That water is full of wild yeast and bacteria from the dough breaking down, and a wet sponge soaks that stuff up like nothing else. Once you set it near the trays, the air around the proof pulls that smell and those bugs right into the dough. A dry sponge or one rinsed clean wouldn't have done that to you. Bleach bucket is fine but the real fix is not leaving wet sponges or dirty water anywhere near proofing dough.
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the_alex16h ago
Been baking for 15 years and I gotta disagree. A clean wet sponge can still wreck your proof if it sits out long enough, it's not just about the old dough water. Any damp cloth or sponge left in a warm kitchen grows stuff fast, I don't care if you rinsed it that morning. The proofing area pulls in whatever is floating around it and dough is like a magnet for off smells. So yeah the dirty water made it worse but blaming only the water misses the point, keep sponges out of that zone no matter what.
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