Doubling sourdough bread recipe
This might be a stupid question, but here goes. I have a SD recipe I want to try out, which makes one loaf. I want to make two. How do I go about this, should I double the levain along with the rest of the ingredients? The levain build is 40 g mature starter, 15 g AP flour + 15 g whole spelt flour, and 30 g water (= 100 g in total, or 20% of the total dough formula).
I'm not sure if I should stick with baker's math and just double the amount of levain so it still makes up 20%, and if so, whether I should also double the amount of mature starter in the mix (80 g instead of 40 g). I am worried that things will take forever if I don't increase the amount of levain along with the rest of the ingredients, but since we're talking sourdough here I have a feeling things aren't as straight forward.
I hope that's all you're supposed to do, b/c I've been doing it that way for the last year with doubling or tripling. Seems to have been working fine.
Just double all the ingredients and proceed as normal. If your baker's percent stay the same, it will work just as well.
There are some things to consider when you are making large amounts of bread dough due to something called mass effect. But that starts to apply for doughs over 3-4 kg I believe.
The only dumb question is the one you don't ask. Yes, bakers math says the percentages need to stay the same, whether the loaf is 450 grams or 4,500 grams . There are some modifications that you may need to account for in process. For example, if you normally make a loaf of 450 grams of flour , and you knead it a certain amount of time, it may take longer to get the same development if you use 900 grams, though not twice as long. The other issue is that if you do anything that involves changing the temp - like a proofer or retarder, a larger dough mass will take longer to get to the new temp. For the most part though, just stay with the same percentages, and watch the dough, not the clock, and you should be fine.
Thank you for your insights.
I ended up doubling all the ingredients. Things have progressed as expected, perhaps a bit faster, but that could be due to the temperature in my kitchen today, and the fact that I increased the percentage of whole spelt flour ++. Resting in the fridge now to be baked in the morning, fingers crossed it won't overproof.