Is there anything special one needs to do when doubling a bread recipe?
Does one just use twice as much of everthing?

I am a novice. After about three tries, and some adjustments, I finally
settled on a multi-grain bread recipe that I (and my family) like. It
ends up with the texture of "regular" sandwich bread. But, my recipe
only makes two loaves.

Yesterday, I doubled the recipe and instead of ending up with 4 clones
of the nice loaves I had made before, I ended up with 4 pretty dense,
semi-risen loaves. Edible but heavy.

Here's my basic process: I mix the dough, let it rest for 20 minutes,
add the salt & knead it, let it rise, shape it into loaves, let the
loaves rise, and then bake. I use rapid rise yeast.

The only thing I noticed this time around that struck me as different is
that when I "rested" the dough, the dough had noticeably risen. I am
sure I let it rest around the same amount of time. I'm not saying that
this is the only thing that was actually different, I am pretty new to
this, so I may simply overlooked some key thing.

Any ideas about what I goofed up?

On 10/15/06, SriBikeJi > wrote:
> Is there anything special one needs to do when doubling a bread recipe?
> Does one just use twice as much of everthing?

Pretty much. The only oddity is in spices. If you are working with a
bread that is spiced, you may not want to double the spices. That's a
matter of trial and error.

As to adding the salt late, I suggest against it. Salt helps the
gluten develop and acts as an antioxiodant which prevents the dough
from being bleached as it is kneaded.

As with any bread, the baker needs to adjust the amount of liquid to
make sure the dough has the right consistency, and it can be hard for
a beginning baker to pay enough attention to the consistency of dough.
And it's easy to be inconsistent in ones measurements if one is
measuring with cups. I think it was in this newgroup that a number of
people weighed their cup of flour and discovered two interesting
things. A cup can vary from a little under 100 to over 200 grams,
depending on how the cup is filled (sifted and then spooned into the
cup or scooped out of the bag), and that even with the same person
filling a cup, there could be a 25% variation between cups.

No matter how one measures, in the end the dough has to "feel right"
and learning what "right" is can be one of the harder things for a
baker to learn.

A final comment, dough would rather be a little too wet thana little
to dry. Or, "wetter is better."

Good luck,
Mike

On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 17:24:31 GMT, SriBikeJi > wrote:

>Is there anything special one needs to do when doubling a bread recipe?
> Does one just use twice as much of everthing?
>
>I am a novice. After about three tries, and some adjustments, I finally
>settled on a multi-grain bread recipe that I (and my family) like. It
>ends up with the texture of "regular" sandwich bread. But, my recipe
>only makes two loaves.
>
>Yesterday, I doubled the recipe and instead of ending up with 4 clones
>of the nice loaves I had made before, I ended up with 4 pretty dense,
>semi-risen loaves. Edible but heavy.
>
>Here's my basic process: I mix the dough, let it rest for 20 minutes,
>add the salt & knead it, let it rise, shape it into loaves, let the
>loaves rise, and then bake. I use rapid rise yeast.
>
>The only thing I noticed this time around that struck me as different is
>that when I "rested" the dough, the dough had noticeably risen. I am
>sure I let it rest around the same amount of time. I'm not saying that
>this is the only thing that was actually different, I am pretty new to
>this, so I may simply overlooked some key thing.
>
>Any ideas about what I goofed up?

One suggestion is to NOT double the amount of yeast. Yeast does a good
job of multiplying on its own, and the most yeast you need is .5
teaspoon per cup of flour, but once you get to 4 or more cups of
flour, adding more yeast does little except speed up the rise. As a
slower rise gives better flavour most of the time, less yeast means
better flavour, so do NOT double the yeast.

FWIW

rsh

On 10/15/06, RsH > wrote:

> One suggestion is to NOT double the amount of yeast. Yeast does a good
> job of multiplying on its own, and the most yeast you need is .5
> teaspoon per cup of flour, but once you get to 4 or more cups of
> flour, adding more yeast does little except speed up the rise. As a
> slower rise gives better flavour most of the time, less yeast means
> better flavour, so do NOT double the yeast.

I have to respectfully disagree. Having scaled recipes from 1 to over
50 loaves, I never adjusted the amount of yeast outside what the
spreadsheet suggested. Or, if I doubled the recipe, I doubled the
yeast.

The rise times were consistent whether I made 1 loaf or 50+.

Slow rises are advantageous. But it's also good to be able to predict
the rise time if you have a schedule you need to adhere to, whether
that is customers coming at 8:00 AM for bread or you need to go to
take the kids to school or go to work or whatever.

Mike