rising problems with double recipe
Hello everybody. I apologize if this has been covered but I'm at work now and haven't had a chance to sift through the posts here yet. My problem is this: I had a bread recipe and it made nice bread. We decided that I would make all of our bread to avoid buying so i got two 12"x4.5"(I think that's right) pans so the loaves were more like store bought in shape. Basically I just doubled the recipe and while rising in the bowl it seems to rise fine but once I scale and pan them for the final rise(covered with a towel), it doesn't seem to get near the volume as half the recipe got in a regular loaf pan. I know some adjustments need to be made as the recipe scales up buy I assumed being such a small quantity it wouldn't be such a problem. The formula i use for two loaves is very basic:
850g bread flour
510g water
9g salt
4g yeast
It seems to rise ok until it gets to the top of the pans, could the towel be too heavy? I have made two batches and they both turned out the same way. I haven't tried making two batches with the original formula to see if that helps. I'm new to bread making and this has me a little aggravated. Thank you for any help.
Oh, the basic process is make the dough, let rise covered in a big bowl folding twice, weighing splitting in half, panning, covering for the final rise then 400 until golden, with steam at the beginning.
You might need to cut back on the bulk ferment. It's possible your yeasts are eating enough of the food that there's not enough left for a good final rise.
Bread likes being made in quantity, so I find that when increasing the amount of dough, sometimes it's helpful to decrease the amount of yeast.
In your case, though, the easiest thing would probably be to just cut back on the bulk fermentation, maybe just letting it rise the once. How long do you usually let go for before dividing?
Here's a post where someone had a similar problem: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/38298/dough-doesnt-rise-after-shaping
Thanks for the response and the link! How long I let it go before dividing varies. sometimes on really cool days its gone for nearly 12 hours. Generally though, I guess it would go for maybe 6-7 hours. If its really warm and the yeast is active, I will give it an extra rise in the bowl before dividing. What i try to do if I can is rise, fold, rise, fold and divide, rise, bake.
How is the resulting loaf other than being a bit short in the pan? Essentially your bread? If so it may be as simple as needing more dough. If you figure out the volume of your pans you'll be able to figure out how much dough you really need in the new pan. length x width x height.
So if you were using a 9 x 5 x 3 = 135 (holds 681.5 g dough perfectly)
Now your using a 12 x 4.5 x 3??? = 162
162/135 = 1.2 or 120% = 817 g
This my guess based on your description. The formula seems fine. Just check the pans and see that your using enough dough. Of course my math above was a guess on the sizes of your pans.
so you could increase dough by 20 %
Happy Baking
Josh
Josh
I'm ashamed to admit but I didn't calculate the volume of the new pans. Your dimensions were right soiit probably needs more dough. The bread I got the last two times weren't my bread. It's been dry and denser than normal. I will try adding more dough next time, both pans had around 861g in them somaymaybe they just gave up at the end. Thanks for the idea!
you put too little dough in the pan and baked as per usual it would make sense it dried out since the overall volume of the dough was less than in the smaller pan. Plus it might imply others were right with overproofing since you claim its dense and you were waiting for similar signs of height in the pan as you did with smaller pans but there wasn't enough dough. Might be as simple a fix as upping amount of dough per pan.
Cheers
Josh
Golgi, on what do you base your statement that a 9 x 5 x 3 pan holds 681.5g of dough perfectly? That seems like such an odd number. Is there a formula for that?
Based off of the original recipe posted cut in half which is stated to have come out to his/her liking before getting larger pans and doubling the formula.
Josh
in the bowl can sometimes be tricky. I know myself, and I get lazy with time letting the rise get longer and higher than it should be if I don't have a gauge or some trick.
When are you deciding it has risen enough? I'm asking because I've found that bowls are terrible for judging volume and if you wait until the dough starts deflating on it's own, it's too late. Mark your bowl or container at the deflated level of freshly mixed dough. (flatten it out as best you can in the container) Remove the dough from the bowl. Fill the bowl with water to the line, pour that into another container. Then fill up the bowl again to the mark and add the container of previously measured water to get "doubled" the volume. Mark the level.
Then pour out the water and plop the dough back inside to rise to the "double mark." Don't let a bulk rise get higher. That would be the highest rise for a white wheat bread. The dome of the rising bread will go higher than the mark and the edges of the dough will be lower than the mark.
Mini
Basically I just peek under the towel and say "yeah that looks good" . I should probably be more accurate than that but I've never had a problem until the last couple weeks. I could invest in a container more suited to letting bread rise though.