The mother of all loaf tins... (well, for me)
Firstly, thanks to those who welcomed me to TFL!
Recently, I inherited some rather large loaf tins - 12" x 5". At the time, the person that passed them on said "I wouldn't even bother using them, I just can't get a loaf baked in the middle!" to which I scoffed a little. Hah! I am quite the baker now! I won't have those problems!
Now, these tins look big. You could drop the Grand Canyon in one of them. Well, compared to the cute little 9x5, that is. And I now have four. What to bake first?
Ah, my old favourite, Multigrain Extraorinaire, from BBA. with some minor tweaks - formula below. I cut the sugar in the recipe in half, as for my taste the original amount makes almost a sweet dessert bread. I also increased the flour - this is probably more due to my flour compared to someone elses, however I did increase it by almost 10% which seems quite a lot just to account to regional differences.
I've made this recipe a number of times - it's my standard loaf, I make one or two every weekend. So it was no big deal making the dough, shape it, dump into the new tin. Pause. I've done something wrong here, the loaf looks like a little sausage in the bottom of this tin. It must just be perspective, this being a big tin and all... leave to rise - not as much rising as I'd expect. What's wrong? Ah, I split the dough (as always) into two one pounders. This is a huge tin! I won't post the photo of the final result - it was a relatively flat loaf, and extremely embarassing!
Here's the formula I used for to make two one pound loaves (as posted in another thread, based on Multigrain Extraordinaire in BBA):
Final dough (amount ingredient / bakers %)
449g Bread Flour / 100%
105g multigrain soaker / 23.5% (below)
26g brown rice / 5.9%
18g brown sugar / 4.1%
10g salt / 2.2%
9g yeast / 1.9%
105g buttermilk / 23.5%
26g honey / 5.9%
158g water / 35.3%
Multigrain soaker: (amount ingredient / bakers %)
25g polenta / 50%
19g rolled oats / 37.5%
12g wheat bran / 25%
50g water / 100%
which works really nicely.
However, every time I scaled it up to make one three pound loaf, I would get big holes in the middle. Insufficient mixing, not enough gluten development? Not enough cooking time? I'm not sure. Anyhow, I thought this weekend, "I will make this big loaf one more time and if it doesn't work, it's back to nice easy small loaves." To be sure of the gluten part, after I used my dough hook for 6 minutes, I then did 3 stretch'n'folds in the course of an hour, then left it to rise to double. Shaped, left to rise again and baked at 190C (~375F) for around 30-40 minutes.
Comments
Congrats with your success in that large pan. I might even try this myself with my 4 by 15 inch pan! Makes a good loaf that one!
By the way, I also find that the multigrain extraordinare from BBA requires a lot more flour than stated I think this is due to it calling for high gluten flour (protein ranging from 14 to 16 precent). When baking with bread flour, AP is probably too weak, try lowering the hydration a bit. Hamelman has several 5 grain breads and using one of those as guideline one might be able to adjust for proper hydration using lower protein flours.
ah, nice one! thanks for the tip. It's so hard to get flour here in Aus that if I see any I'll snatch it up fast :)
Well done! A fine loaf of sandwich bread and sliced with a skillful hand, I would say. 4 loaves of those would feed a crowd.
Eric
Very nice looking loaf, JJ. I recently discovered one long loaf tin when I was cleaning out a cupboard over-stuffed with stuff. I'll have to try employing it on the next batch of sandwich bread that I bake.
--Pamela
Lovely bread, JJ. I don't like digging out my bread slicer..but when I do they still don't look as neat and even as your slicing..hope you can post a photo if you use a slicer! I also have 3 very long loaf pans but they are not near as wide and deep as yours. They come in very handy for those extra large loads of dough and I like having smaller, longer bread loaves for sandwiches.
Sylvia
thanks sylvia! (and Eric and Pamela above!)
After those nice comments, I'm a little embarrassed to say that I do slice by hand with no guide - as they say, practice makes perfect!
Wow, you're quite the pro! The loaf is beautiful and the slicing is amazing. What type/brand of knife do you use?
>AKAlicious
like those large loaf tins!
A certain person in our household has been asked to place a phone book under her left foot while slicing breads. Otherwise, the angle becomes near 45 degrees quickly.
Eric
I'll have to try that, Eric! ;-)