You are a great example of why it’s so impotrant to monitor temperatures. Like I’ve said before, dough temperature is the most critical aspect of dough management. I would encourage you to consider 80 to 85F as your target temperature range. 80 to 90 is way too hot and too broad. It is common to store water in the cooler. I’ve been is some stores with a pretty elaborate water cooler. Think of this: A water tank (plastic 55 gallon drum) with a spigot coming off of the bottom (actually the side, about 2-inches up from the bottom) this is used to take water from the container. The water is stored in the cooler and cold water is drawn from the container as needed. You will probably need to be looking at water about 60 to 65F to give you a dough with the target temperature. At the end of the day, any used water is replenished in the holding container. I know a 55 gallon container is too big for your reach-in but think of a 10 gallon water jug from Walmart, maybe two. Now you can just pour the water out as needed. Also, make sure you’re cross stacking the dough boxes in th ecooler for at least 2 hours, maybe a bit longer in the reach-in as they’re not quite as efficient as a walk-in cooler. I realize that you might not be able to truly cross stack in the reach-in, so, instead, you should off-set the stack front to back, by this I mean that the first box will have the rear three inches or so not covered by the box on top of it, then the next box will have the front three inches not covered, then the next will not have the rear covered, you see the pattern. The idea is to allow the boxes to ventilate as this cools the dough balls more uniformly and quickly than sealing the boxes closed as soon as you put them into the cooler.
Another option for water temperature control is to buy several bags of ice. Keep a 5 gallon bucket of ice water in the cooler to cool the tap water to 65F or so, replenish the water in the bucket after each dough and always make sure it has ice in it. Try not to get too much ice into the dough.
Keep me posted on your results.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor