Choosing the right size pullman pan (Borodinsky)
Hi folks. First post. I don't have much experience making bread, so I thought I'd start with something easy...
My goal is to make a good loaf of sourdough rye. I'd like to get this process down pat and turn it into a weekend ritual. I'm interested in Eastern European and Russian food - and rye is at the heart of that - so I've attempted to scale down Andy's well-known Borodinsky formula. I scaled it down because it would be too much for me. His total is 1935 grams. I'm aiming for about half that - give or take. Andy's formula is for a pullman pan, but it doesn't say what size. Does anyone know?
I turned up what looks like a nice resource with sizing guidelines for pullman pans:
Pullman Pan SizesThe pans come in various sizes depending on what a manufacturer decides to offer.
- Small: 9 x 4 x 4 inches (23 x 10 x 10 cm). Makes a 1.5 pound / 680g loaf (a bread recipe calling for approximately 3 cups / 15 oz / 425g of flour)
- Typical: 13 x 4 x 4 inches (33 x 10 x 10 cm). Makes a 2 pound / 900g loaf (a bread recipe calling for approximately 3 3/4 to 4 cups / 20 oz / 550g of flour. You might be able to fit a 5 cup flour bread recipe in here.)
- Long (16 x 4 x 4 inches / 40 x 10 x 10 cm)
- Long and skinny: (16 x 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches / 40 x 9 x 9 cm)
According to this, 13 x 4 x 4 is just the ticket, but I'm concerned that an 80% rye loaf wouldn't rise to these expectations. If high percentage rye dough won't rise like normal dough, as I've read, how far off are these guidelines?
This Paderno "blue steel" pan looks good to me, but at 11.825 x 4 x 4 it's a little smaller than the Typical recommendation for a ~900 gram loaf. Roughly how much high percentage rye dough would it be appropriate for?
For those who aren't familiar with the term, "blue steel" is what Paderno calls its carbon steel, which needs to be seasoned just like cast iron - only more so. That's why the reviewers are so angry that the pan is flaking and rusting after a few uses. They don't know what they've bought.
Thanks for your attention. This forum is dense!
No, no, no, those guidelines are for pain de mie and I don't quite agree with them either. With rye dough you can fit significantly more. That Paderno pullman can probably handle as much as 2 kilos of rye dough.
at, if things go right you can count on a 1/3 rise total. That is fill the pan with 2/3 of the expected size of the loaf and 1/3 will rise to make the "whole." Doesn't always turn out that way. Those dough weights are for a white wheat loaf, Big difference. I know that Andy has mentioned the size of his pans somewhere. try site searching: Ananda rye pan size and see what shows up. Then look for the half pan size.
It is also possible to put a double layer foil tent on top of a normal pan too. And pinch it tight. Or invert a second pan on top of the filled one and foil strip the edges.
can weigh the pan, fill it with water to get the water weight. Take the water weight times .66 (per Mini's 2/3 full} to ge the weight of the dough to fill it.
I'm pretty sure I learned this from Mini:-)
:) That works well for pans in the kitchen. Tricky for an internet pan where the scales and water is imaginary. Could figure the weight of water in the pan using the dimensions. Watch those tapered edges!
Go with Gary for the pans, he uses them. There you will come closest. :)
The beauty of the heavy ryes are their heaviness!
not to mention their unbelievable aroma and ungodly taste! The best there is in all 3 cases - weight, aroma and taste
The 13" Pullman is right for 1800g of 100% rye paste. The 9" Pullman scales at 1200g.
For a white, enriched sandwich bread, the 13" takes 750g of dough, and the 9", 500g.
cheers,
gary
Thanks so much everyone for letting me know that those guidelines are not even close. I assumed that rye dough would be heavier than the regular dough those figures were based on, but not that much heavier.
Trusting those figures to some extent, I started this thread thinking that I'd be scaling down an enormous loaf (20+ inches). I thought that an 11 x 4 x 4 pan wouldn't even hold 900 grams of dough. Since the Borodinsky formulas I've been reading are apparently much more reasonable in size than I'd imagined, this decision got a whole lot easier.
It turns out that several members of this community are using these very same Paderno steel pans I was considering. Reading over bread logs today has been like peering into the future. I'm seeing images of pretty much what I want to make in the vessel I want to make it in - and every step of the process is documented!
I went ahead and ordered the 7.825 x 4 x 4 pan after hovering over the 11.825 one. Made my decision when I realized that even this larger size probably wouldn't make enough bread to last all week, if I like the result. A smaller pan should be good for learning, and once I get the hang of this, I think I'd prefer to make multiple (gift-sized!) loaves than longer bread.
Thanks again!
Well, the sizes given can be considered wrong, depending on who you talk to.
The 9 x4 x4 pan is a regular size, the small size is a 4.5 x4 x4 pan.
As for the amount of dough, that depends on the kind of bread you are making. I use the 9 x 4 x 4 inch loaf pan, and work my recipe around 850 grams.
On a day when your starter is on the slow side, you may have to add 50 grams more.
Keep track of your recipe and adapt as needed. Weighing in grams makes it easy to change your loaf size by 10%.
For what it's worth I have three comments
1) the pan in your link is 15.75 x 4 x 4 inches.
2) I have that exact pan and would rather have a shorter version (11.825 x 4 x 4) so that it would fit in my proofer, it's 3/4 in longer than the proofer.
3) My methodology for total dough weight (TDW) is to take the dough weight and pan size used in the original recipe and then scale it to fit my pan using volume of the pan comparisons, as a percentage. This has worked successfully with multiple rye bakes that I've done. One thing to note is that the bake times differ due to the increase in TDW
Here's an example using my pan in inches and MM:
Orig recipe .950kg (950g) pan size 9x4x4 inches
Scaled recipe 1.663kg (1663g) pan size 15.75 x 4 x 4 inches.
This represents a 75% increase in volume and TDW, (1.75x .950kg=1.663kg)