September 16, 2017 - 11:48am
Question about baking time adjustments for variously sized loaves
Hi, I'm prepping a slight variation on Tartine 3's oat porridge bread (link), and I'm considering baking some small loaves and some large ones, though I haven't decided on the size for each yet. Can someone suggest or point me to guidelines on how to make adjustments in the baking time based on size? Are there other important considerations to keep in mind? I doubt I'll go less than 1.5#. I've got more than 9 pounds of dough to experiment with.
Thank you!
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For 600 to 800 g loaves, she suggested heating the oven with the pots inside to 475 F, then dropping the temp to 450 F after loading the loaves in the oven and baking for 25 minutes. Remove the lid and bake another 20-25 minutes at 425F. Internal temp should be at least 205 F.
This works perfectly for me. I bake 6 loaves at a time in Dutch ovens so at the midway point, I swap the pots from the bottom shelf to the top shelf and vice versa. I also bake in convection mode since I have a hot spot in my oven and burned the bottoms the first time I tried this. Convection just seems to produce a more even heat throughout the oven and no more burnt bottoms!
I ended up dividing the dough into equal portions (about 1kg each), so I followed the Tartine instructions of starting at 500, but I did follow a similar pattern of dropping the temp in stages, as you suggest. I had to bake the four loaves one at a time due to oven size, but they all came out quite well.
The first was an exception, because I got distracted and forgot to lower the temperature. It ended up with a pretty scorched bottom. To prevent that, in addition to lowering the temp, I put a layer of rolled outs in the skillet of my cast iron combo cooker and placed my dough on parchment. That layer of protection helped a lot.
I'd post pics here, but I need to get to work. If you'd like to see how it turned out, I'm on Instagram at @quartet1977.
Thanks again!!