Pan Size

Note: See update appended.

I was reading about a bread I'd like to try on Let's Cook with Meg and Ted. It's called a Grant Loaf and it seems really quick beginning to end. I especially appreciated the emphasis placed on the size of the baking pan relative to the batch size of the loaf. When baking in a pan (rather than free-form on tiles or something) I believe this is a particularly overlooked parameter. At least, it's been in my experience. I found this cool reference on volumes of popular Pan Size and their volumetric equivalents. Should be a useful reference when creating/planning/scaling a recipe. Just thought I'd share.

Update: You'd think I'd actually pay attention to my own advice. I used an 8 1/2 x 4 x 2 inch pan which was roughly 1100 mL volume (measured by simply adding water to the empty pan; It's tricky to compensate for the bevel in the pan and really wanted an accurate determination of volume. The recipe I decided to use was:

My First Grant Loaf
water, hot tap, ca 110F, 200 g
whole wheat flour, 90 g
rye flour, 90 g
spelt flour, 90 g
honey, ca. 15 g
salt, 5-6 g
rapid rise yeast, 1.5 t, ca. 5 g
Total mass, ca. 500 g

8 minute mix in my bread machine, shaped into a loaf, let proof for 30 minutes, baked at 425 for 30 minutes, popped out of the pan, let cool 20 minutes and ate some. It looked like the earthy crunchy super dense loaves at your least favorite health store. So, right now, no pic. But it tasted great!

The pan size, based on the citation in the first paragraph, was roughly 2 times too big. I think this has a lot to do with the dynamics of baking, the sides covered the loaf rather than the loaf springing past the sides of the pan to be baked. Maybe it won't make a difference, but my next attempt will confirm it. I'll either double the dough size or decrease the pan size. Stay tuned.

One last note: I'm actually not pitching this it tasted so good and I always pitch stuff that frustrates me. Drives my loved one nuts but I can't tolerate inferior baked goods and despite this one's shortcomings, it was quite good. And, I did all before dropping the kid off at daycare.