How do I bake half a recipe of bread?

May 17, 2020 11:20 AM

I am making this recipe for no-knead bread proofed in an instant pot. I didn't have enough flour for the full recipe so I cut it in half. But now I am not sure how to adjust the baking time. I also have an enormous dutch oven (7 quart I think) and I'm thinking that might not allow my bread to rise well enough. Any suggestions for how to optimize my baby loaf?
posted by Neely O'Hara to Food & Drink (8 answers total)

I made a smaller circle of aluminum foil as an insert to my larger Dutch oven and heated it inside when bringing the pan to temperature. It's worked well. Didn't adjust the baking time, although that's a range so I usually go by look and feel.
posted by cyndigo at 11:33 AM on May 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

I might take 5 minutes off of the initial "covered" portion of the baking, but for the most part, I don't think I'd change anything about the procedure of this recipe. Your dutch oven should be fine (its mostly being used to trap steam and make a crisp crust)

I make overnight no-knead and overnight sourdough pretty regularly. This recipe calls for a lot more yeast than a typical overnight bread (most of the no-kneads call for 1/4 - 1/2 tsp for 3 cups of flour, and a 12-18 hour rise). Between that and the yogurt mode on the instant pot, you should have no problem getting it to rise.

Bread is about feel more than it is about time (and there's an old adage that suggests treating temperature as an ingredient -- your bread will act differently on summer day in humid DC than it will in Las Vegas in November). If your dough doubles in size in 2 hours, use it. If it doesn't double in 4, give it more time -- it will get there.

Thanks for teaching me about using the yogurt mode for proofing, though... that looks like a good trick.
posted by toxic at 11:43 AM on May 17, 2020

That recipe looks delicious!

If you don't have an instant pot, you can use your oven with the light on, but no heat.

About the Dutch oven: basically you'll be fine. When you shape the dough into a ball after the rise, it should develop a surface tension that keeps it from flowing out all over the place (and becoming flat in your oven. If the ball does seem to fall flat during the rise, you need to stretch it out into a flat disc and and fold it into itself and make a new ball. This will be better than the previous one already. Let it rise to double size before baking.
posted by mumimor at 11:48 AM on May 17, 2020

Do you have a smaller oven-proof container that fits inside the dutch oven, like a small souffle dish or large ramekin? Yes, shorten the time for the bread covered and the time uncovered. You can test doneness by sticking an instant read thermometer into the the bottom of the loaf (so the hole doesn't show) to about the center of the loaf. Most folks say the temperature of cooked bread should be 205 degrees fahrenheit at the center.
posted by tmdonahue at 12:07 PM on May 17, 2020

We cook our bread until the center is 180 degrees. 200+ makes a really dry loaf. But yeah, don't use a timer, use a thermometer. It's totally repeatable that way.
posted by fritley at 1:20 PM on May 17, 2020 [4 favorites]

The size of the pot really doesn't matter. But if you would rather have a smaller container, say for dish-washing reasons, anything ovenproof with a tight-fitting lid will do. If your baking sheet is nice and level, you can put the dough on the baking sheet, on paper, and put an upside down steel or oven proof ceramic bowl over it for the first phase.
Heat retention can be a thing, depending on your oven, and for that purpose you can fill your oven with metal stuff: below the shelf where you are baking, add in a sheet where you put all of your cast-iron cookware and let it heat up with the oven. I rarely bother with this and still get crusty loaves with good oven-spring.
posted by mumimor at 2:54 PM on May 17, 2020

I've been making tiny test (sourdough) loaves as kitchen experiments, and haven't changed the cooking time or pot. You could probably take the lid off after 25 minutes so you can check it's progress easier. I vary between 25 and 30 minutes depending on whim.
posted by kjs4 at 5:24 PM on May 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

Don’t worry about the size of your Dutch oven. It’s great that you have one! The point is that a Dutch oven traps the moisture of baking bread in a small volume which produces bread just like professional steam injection ovens found in bakeries. You might have to bake it a few minutes less, at best. Nthing judge by internal temperature. And don’t be worried if the bread gets dark and crusty. In the case, dark colour means flavour!
posted by lemon_icing at 12:33 PM on May 18, 2020