One of the advantages of baker's percentages is that recipes can be scaled by simply maintaining the percentages. A few weeks ago I made a loaf that tasted great, and the next time I am considering doubling the amounts to be able to make two loaves. My general question is whether I need to anticipate any adjustments along the way (through the steps of baking) from having twice as much of each component. In particular it seems to me that there might be something different during bulk fermentation if only because the mass of dough will be bigger. Once the dough is divided and then shaped, I should essentially be back to where I was with the original single loaf process.
Are there any issues to be alert to when scaling up or down from a given recipe/formula? Thanks in advance for any advice and comments.
Ted
when scaling up a recipe is that the larger bulk of dough takes much longer to change temperatures, which can be an issue if you are doing a retarded bulk in the refrigerator. Plan on there being more fermentation happening in the fridge before the dough cools enough to slow it down, and time things accordingly.
I suspect that you may also notice more of an increase in original dough temperature if using a mixer, especially a smaller residential style mixer (it just has to work that much harder). Using slightly cooler water would be enough to fix that, though. I prefer to hand mix, so haven't noticed any change when doing larger amounts.
Other than that, I haven't heard of anything that would be a problem, but I'm sure that those with experience in the much larger batches will have more to suggest.
Please let us know how the bake with the scaled up amount goes!
If scaling up results in baking more loaves in one go, would this affect oven spring? I'm wondering if more moisture would be emitted from more loaves (good?) but oven temperature might be temporarily reduced as the oven is loaded (not so good). What do others think?
Hi IceDemeter and Cellarvie,
I finally was able to try the doubled recipe. There was no retarded bulk involved, but it did seem that the general bulk fermentation proceeded at least as quickly as the first time (with the original formula amounts). Perhaps a larger mass of dough retains temperature with more stability. For the original, I used a stand mixer, but this time I opted for hand mixing. One thing that I probably should have done more of was mixing before the first rise (I did a series of S&F at thirty minute intervals). The stand mixer definitely created a smoother surface on the dough than I achieved during my hand mixing. That of course has nothing to do with doubling the ingredients (the topic of this thread), but more with my technique.
As for baking, I did one loaf in a Dutch oven and one on a baking stone, each in a separate oven, so there were no issues with oven spring.
Thanks to both of you for posting replies. Seems to be difficult to get many responses on this site.
I'm sorry that you didn't get many replies. I suspect that you had unfortunate timing in posting in mid-summer for most of the Northern Hemisphere folks here, when many of folks aren't baking or posting (too hot, or busy with kids out of school, or just vacationing). I suspect you'd have had more responses a month or two earlier or later.
I notice that posts where the originator doesn't come back in short order to make it more of a conversation tend to fall back so far on the list that it doesn't get seen by folks who haven't logged in for a couple of days. Many folks will also not comment if they feel that the question has already been answered, or if the question just isn't something that they have experience with. Hopefully any future questions that come up for you will be in a season when there are more folks with time to check in here frequently.
Regardless, it sounds like your experiment with scaling up went well, with some new learning on just how much gluten development is better for your recipe at mix time. Nice job, and thanks for letting us know how it went!