May 8, 2015 - 12:58pm
Number of loaves per bake
Hi my fellow breadies,
If I can fit up to 4 DOs in an oven... would you advise doing so? I might be crazy but I've always felt that the bread wasn't the same when I baked more than one loaf at a time.
Please help. Need to bake quite a number tomorrow morning and would like to NOT wake up at 1:30 a.m. to do so.
Thank you!
Share
If you can fit the DO in your oven I do not see where the problem ist, should all come out fine and the same.
I can fit my 2 DO next to each other , I think, if you need to put 2 on the top shelf and 2 on the bottem shelf it would good to use the Fan option for baking.
on lots of things. Mostly is the thermal capacity of the DOs and the oven. If your loaves are say 1.2Kg, then that's upwards of 850g of water in each one - imagine boiling 2.5 litres of water in the oven...
If the oven has a fan and a 3kW heater then it might be OK.
I put 12 small loaves or 6-9 large loaves into one of my ovens (I don't use DOs) and it copes just fine - however it has 2 fans and 2 x 1.5kW heating elements - and 3 x 10mm thick steel plates to load the dough onto... The plates hold heat and can transfer heat into the dough and the oven cavity - while the oven is trying to bring the temperature back up again after being loaded with all that water...
So... Crank the oven up full - let it get properly hot (an hour) pre-heat the DOs too if you can and go for it!
-Gordon
I don't bake in DOs but the chemist in me says that the biggest issue is going to be getting every oven up to temperature. As Gordon notes above, your going to have a lot of water in this bake. You don't say what type of oven this is. If it is a traditional home oven it's going to take some time to get all the DOs up to temperature and that's a must. I just use a 1/4 inch baking steel that can take two loaves and and I give this 50 minutes to thoroughly heat up to 500dF.
should I use the convection mode? And if I do, do I bake as usual? Do I preheat with convection mode on? The manual says nothing about this. Good god, I cannot believe I am testing this out on the day I am selling the bread. Thank you for your responses :-)
...because once the DO's are hot enough, they do the baking not the oven. It's job is to maintain a supply of heat to the DOs. I'd use whichever mode is the most efficient.
Good luck.
Just remember the CI will lag the air temperature by 20 minutes. Once you get the DO hot they would be fine to lad the bread into and back into the oven. You don't want to turn on the convection fan until after the lids come off at the 20 minute mark. Gas ovens are notorious for not being able to hold the steam and the fan will help evacuate it faster so the loaves can brown well. For a normal whiteish SD bread of about 800 G each it should bake until the middle reads 205 - 210 F - no worries. Just be patient getting the Iron up to temperature. I would preheat them to 500 F plus 15 minutes and and once the bread goes in I would turn the oven down to 450 F
I would load 2 at a time so the door isn't open o long.
Happy baking
as you have the bread covered during the first part of the bake so steam is trapped (this is only an issue if you are doing uncovered bakes and you need steam generation in the early stage. In this instance you don't want convection mode.). It's my experience that ovens heat up faster and more consistently with convection 'ON'. I agree with dabrownman that you should preheat things to 500dF and this will compensate for the heat loss as you are transferring the dough to the DOs. Once in the oven turn it down to your desired baking temperature.
for your responses. The bake turned out ok although I was afraid to heat it up to 500 degrees with convection. Sounds silly, I know. I'm going to try again mid-week before I do my Saturday bake.
rate between air and what it is blowing on, in this case the bread is covered so if the fan is on or not has no effect on the bread. Once the bread is uncovered if you are running with the fan on generally you decrease the temperature from what non convection baking calls for.
Gerhard
I thought I should post some of my findings here in case someone might find it helpful. I found out that:
• my Wolf is not a true convection oven (because it is gas) -- it's just a fan (!)
• it isn't designed for multiple rack backing (!!)
• I must NOT place anything on the floor of the oven -- no cookie sheet, no baking stone, nada. This will wreck the cavity of the oven and replacing/fixing it is not on the warranty.
• Chart from Wolf only shows preheating time when preheating to the max of 400 degrees (what?!)
Finally, I have been advised to turn the fan on and rotate the DOs for more even baking. By the way, I tried baking 4 DOs mid-week without convection and, perhaps I under proofed, but the breads were flat and lifeless. Which brings me to another question... if they were slightly under proofed, wouldn't they still rise?