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need someone's math skills..dough quantity to use for 9x5x2.5 pan

vickwithpc's picture
vickwithpc

need someone's math skills..dough quantity to use for 9x5x2.5 pan

My white bread dough recipe results in 1104gram.   I bake that in an open 13"x4x4 pullman pan.  If I fill that empty pan with water, it holds 2739 grams in weight.

I want to bake that dough in a 9x5x2.5 pan (http://www.amazon.com/Fat-Daddios-Inch-Loaf-Pan/dp/B001IZZGPU/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top) that has straight sides like a pullman pan.  If I fill that empty pan with water, it holds 1305 g in weight.

Which lead me to think that I could pretty much use half my dough in the 9" pan with success.  I must be wrong.  I did not get the height that I need.  My goal is to produce a nice square slice of bread that I can use 3.5" circle crimper/cutter (from pampered chef) to make peanut butter/jelly sandwiches.  Using the cutter from bread made from the 4" pullman pan get too close to the crust and makes it hard to seal. 

Can somebody better at math or logic than me help?  :)  :)  thank you SO MUCH!!!

 

Les Nightingill's picture
Les Nightingill

I think there must be another factor at play here.

My guess is that the smaller loaf didn't give you the height you expected b/c it cooked faster (lower thermal mass, and the also center of the dough is less insulated from the exterior of the pan). Perhaps lowering the temp a little, so that it can rise more before "setting up" at which point it cannot rise any further.

But easiest is to use a bit more than half of the larger loaf amount, tweaking until it comes out right!

DavidEF's picture
DavidEF

You are measuring what the pan holds, but if you think about it, you don't want a loaf the shape of the pan. you're asking for a square profile, but the pan has a 2:1 ratio rectangular profile (5 x 2.5). The volume of the loaf you want is going to go well over the height of the pan. To get as close as math can get you, take your original pan and mathematically calculate the changes to get it to the smaller pan's loaf size, including the height you need. So, for the length, divide by 13, then multiply by 9. For the width, just multiply by 1.25. For the height, you may keep it the same (4 inches) or multiply it also by 1.25. That method won't be exact, of course, because your loaf is going to round at the top, and you're going to cut it round anyway. But, it will give you a great starting point. Here's what I see:

(1104/13)*9 = 764.3

764.3*1.25 = 955.375

955.375*1.25 = 1194.22

Seems to me, you need to ADD to the original recipe, if you want it to be 5" tall!

Another, even rougher way to look at it is to take the amount of water you measured for that pan, and double it (for double the height). That means, it will take about as much as the original to make it what you want.

These are only very rough guidelines, but it doesn't look like you'll be decreasing the original recipe, and getting a square loaf. In my own experience, I use about 850g of 67% hydration dough for a Pyrex glass loaf pan that is supposedly 9.25x5x3, but it tapers in heavily at the bottom, and of course my loaf is rounded at the top on all four sides, because dough isn't naturally square. And although I haven't measured it, I don't think it reaches 5" height either.