Tips on extending shelf life?
Hi all, you may or may not remember me as the guy that developed a recipe for gluten-free/vegan, fried/yeast-raised mochi donuts and in turn started a business.
Business has been going great thankfully! Too great at this point because I never get sleep anymore, but it's a good problem to have 😅
Anyhow, the overwhelming bulk of my revenue comes from cafe wholesaling; i.e. I deliver donuts to numerous cafes on a daily basis. From what I am told from the majority of the cafes I work with, we have no issues selling out of the donuts, or at the very least close to selling out.
For the ones that don't sell out, I try to adjust my quantities to better manage food waste, but I have to keep minimums reasonable so as to justify the delivery along the route.
My biggest hurdle at the moment is that I only get one day out of these donuts! I would like to be able to have the cafes sell day-olds, but I won't allow it as it's simply not viable. These donuts will get incredibly stale by the next day, and while it can be rectified through heating up, the average cafe isn't going to go through that process.
Does anyone have any suggestions to help make these last longer than one day?
I've since tested a tangzhong, which I found no luck with. I tried sunflower lecithin, and I found it had some sort of weird effect on glazing where it would repel the glaze off of the donut. I add ascorbic acid to my donuts as is, but I find it does nothing to fix the shelf life. I most recently tried amylase, and that yielded the most unfortunate effect (it just completely ruined the structure of my donuts while being dispensed).
The last one I have to try is vegetable glycerin, I just haven't had a chance to make an additional test batch just yet.
If the vegetable glycerin doesn't work, do I have any options left? As I understand it, staling is more or less a result of moisture leaving the donut, so the key is to try and retain that moisture as much as possible.
I'm open to using any sort of conditioners or whatever advice can be provided to test with. I'm not a food scientist and I am also just a one-man show, so I try to squeeze in testing when I am afforded the time. I really want to figure this out and not just have to accept that "it's gluten free and won't last as long". I'm sure there's got to be a way to improve the shelf life without adversely affecting the quality.
Thanks in advance! Pics for attention.