Baking Multiple Loaves at Once

StretchNFold

Hi all,

I am looking to upscale my home baking a bit. No enough to warrant (or afford) a dedicated micro-bakery oven like a Rofco, but I need to work out how to affordably upscale. Currently I am baking one loaf at a time inside a dutch oven utilising the self-steaming method. I have a fairly small but standard sized oven.

Has anyone got any personal experiences or recommendations? I had thought of purchasing a rectangular baking stone and trying to bake two batards in one go on that, but I am unsure if that would work and how plagued with issues and difficulties it could be - e.g. heat distribution, loaves needing to be loaded perfectly or else risk touching, only being able to bake small loaves.

Can anyone offer any suggestions or personal experiences for attempting to bake larger volumes of bread at home? A lot of inspiring bakers I follow on social media such as Instagram tell their story that they started from baking bread at home and selling it to neighbours, etc. however I cannot fathom how they were able to bake a sufficient volume in a home oven to make selling loaves a remotely realistic venture... One loaf at a time each one taking 40ish minutes does not sound viable to me.. they must have had other methods!

Thanks.

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Replies

Sarah Kamienny 2017 July 17

Hi there,

I just came across your post and I have exactly the same questions that you do. I would like to start selling my loaves to friends/acquaintances but baking 1-2 breads at a time doesn't make sense. Have you had any success in researching this topic? I would greatly appreciate any advice!

thank you,

Sarah

Loafer 2017 July 20

I have 2 pizza stones and have succesfully baked 2 loaves at once.

Ive been doing the no knead lately with a sourdough twist in the cast iron and the ceramic cooker but its a tight fit

Ive just ordered an oblong ceramic cloche from Ebay it should be here next week to try it out.

So I can get a longer loaf, better for  slicing for toast

dianem 2020 May 14

Hello (a few years later ),

I've got the same question and just came across your post.  I'm attempting to bake 16 loaves on days when I bake.  One thing I've been doing is using 4 smallish Romertopfs at once for boules that need that kind of oven spring (as for sourdough). I can fit them in the oven, 2 on each rack - and I get OK results. Not as good as I get in my cast-iron/enamel dutch oven, nor as good as a single loaf on my stone with a giant stainless steel bowl covering it, but passable.  I've got only one stone and when I bake a single loaf or 2, I use that, but am wondering about putting 2 stones in the oven and baking on both at once.  If anyone has learned things along the way on this, love to hear.

Kromch 2020 June 7
hey, I'm not providing an answer but actually have a question. Did you say you were trying to bake 16 loaves at a time? How do you mix the dough? I currently make only two loaves at a time and am wondering if you use multiple mixing bowls or a really big bowl or something else.
Diane Moore 2020 September 9

Kromch - just seeing your post now. I'm still trying to figure some of this out. What I was doing was taking a recipe that was typically written for 2 loaves (for example, recipes in Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast or The Breadbakers Apprentice), multiply the recipe by 6, and divide by 4, so I would make 4 separate batches of 4 smallish  (~600 gram) loaves. Rather tedious to measure/mix everything 4 times.

I'm investing in a Rofco bread oven, but I'm still in a home kitchen without a proofer or ample refridgeration, so I'm still trying to figure out how to make larger batches of dough and scale up to mabye 24 loaves during a bake.

Eden Trudgen 2021 September 5
I got a normal oven that can fit 4 5.5 dutch ovens. So I can do 4 at a time. I mix 3 at a time in a bowl. I have done 6 at a time but I now just do multiple bowls. I can do up to 12 a day at this stage. Love to figure out how to upgrade from home to bakery

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