As a cold room specialist we get asked to supply an incredibly diverse size and range of commercial cold rooms. Pharmaceutical, automotive and research/testing conglomerates all figure amongst our clients and the food sector has always been a major factor in our client database. The likes of Aldi, Tesco and MacDonalds have all benefited from our cold room expertise. However, we enjoy helping the smaller, independent food-related businesses just as much.
Some of our food sector supplies in 2021 ….
Dough Retarder
What is a dough retarder? If you know a little French you might be able to guess but, simply put, if you place dough into a cold environment it slows down the fermentation of the yeast. This in turn slows down the rate at which the dough rises. In the case of bread baking, a dough retarder affords the baker the opportunity to achieve more complex flavours. In 2021 we supplied a commercial dough retarder for Pruden’s bakery, an English family bakery in Hertfordshire which was founded almost a century ago by Bill Pruden.
His grandsons are in charge today! Although the original bakery shop still exists, Pruden’s has modern bakery production premises which support a wholesale catering service across an increasing large area (3 counties). We have also previously supplied commercial bakeries with cold rooms for dough proofing – the process that follows dough retarding. Read about our previous dough retarder supplies in our Cold Room For Dough Proofing blog post.
Deer Larder
We have supplied many cold rooms for meat storage but few have ever been in such a wonderful landscape as the deer larder and preparation room that we recently supplied to Fairburn Estates in Scotland.
Set in the Scottish Highlands, Fairburn is renowned for its hill sport and claims to offer some of the best hill sporting opportunities in the area. As such, it is a must for such an estate to have quality cold storage and preparation facilities.
Foraged Food Cold Room Storage
If you fancy trying a truly, all encompassing ‘wild’ dinner menu, you now can – thanks to Totally Wild Foods. From foraging courses to books and online guides and recipes, the company aims to help people learn how to enjoy foraged foods. What’s more, they use one of our large commercial cold rooms for storage.
A few months ago when they asked us to quote for their storage, we were intrigued -a foraged food cold room. A first for us!
Out of interest we took a look at some of their free wild food recipes and built our own menu, as follows:
Starter
Burdock root and butternut squash soup
Main Course
BBQ wild garlic, hogweed and chicken with grilled vegetables and wild chervil
Dessert
Birch sap pudding
We haven’t yet had time to do any foraging or try the recipes but they’re certainly bookmarked for future reference! NOTE: In addition to the larger commercial cold rooms, we also supply small cold rooms which are popular with many bakeries, butchers and restaurants.