January 23, 2015 - 11:42am
Scaling up a recipe
Background: I have been baking good bread off a recipe from a Jacob Burton video I found on YouTube a few weeks ago. It is a 70% hydration loaf with a sourdough starter. The oven temp is for 500F for twenty minutes, and 425-450F for the final thirty minutes. I actually split this into two loaves, and bake them together at 425F. I also use tiles in the preheated oven, and preheated DO's. The lids come off the DO's after the first twenty minutes.
Question: If I want to double the recipe, and bake four loaves at once, should I expect the oven temps and times to change at all?
Thank you!
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If the 4 loaf fits into the oven, No you dont have to adjust the time if your oven has been pre heated and your DO are nice and hot.
Thanks.
Now that we always have bread, we go through it quickly.
I'm still tweaking the oven temp for the two small loaves out of the single recipe. Wasn't getting a good thump from the bottom, so today I tried the temp at 450, but that made the tops much too dark. One issue, is that I have been using parchment paper on the bottom of the DO's, you can clearly see the crust is softer where the parchment was. I'll go back to 425, and see if I can get the dough in without parchment, or slide it out from underneath once dough is in the DO.
I usually run my ovens at 2 temperatures during the bake - 250C/480F or hotter when the dough goes in, then down to about 220C/430F after 11 minutes until they're done (usually in another 20-25 minutes, depending on size)
-Gordon
I know I'm new here, but I just wanted to mention an article I read in Cook's Illustrated one of these past few issues--the subject was cheesecakes and their traditional recipe called for a high temp to set and then baking the rest at a low temp. They noticed their classic recipe wasn't working as well in their perfectly calibrated ovens and tested a bunch of ovens. The article discusses how manufacturers have designed newer ovens to be more energy efficient and better insulated and thus take much longer to go from the higher to lower temperatures than in years past.
The recipe says to pre-heat to 500F, and bake at 500F for the first 20 minutes. Then, it gives a choice: bake between 425F and 450F for the remaining 30 minutes. I cut into today's 450F very dark loaf, and even though it is rather dark on the outside top, and the ears are decidedly burnt, the crumb is perfect. Even with burnt ears, it is probably my best loaf so far, although every loaf from that recipe has been good.
Maybe I should stay at 450F and instead, try leaving the DO lid on longer than the first 20 minutes? The loaves are pale when I first take the lid off. Perhaps the lid offers some protection from burning?
I've had luck putting aluminum foil loosely over a loaf when I want to keep it in a high heat but I see the top of the load starting to scorch (i.e. in the last 3rd of the bake time). Putting it lower in the oven may help a bit with that too.
As for doubling up - when I've had problems with that, it's because the extra loaf vessels block the heat, so I'd end up with the bottom shelf's bread cooking faster. If there's enough room to stagger the loaves so that no one loaf is directly blocked from the heating element, do that. That's the only issue I've had.