SC - Breads

[david friedman]

Kael wrote:
>Bear said:
>>Being curious, I ask, why should you go crazy making 17 loaves of bread?
>>
>{snippage}
>
>We're just a little stressed *twitch*twitch*  And the thought of making
>that much bread at once is a little daunting the first time.
>
>kael

The largest amount of bread I ever made in one day was 65 loaves.

Our little group was hosting a Midrealm Coronation.  Our hall seated about
250 people, and the head cook, who was planning quite a large and elaborate
feast, wanted a loaf (my standard loaf is  about 1.75 lb) among 4 people.
I told her she was overdoing, one loaf among 8 would be fine.  She said I
was probably right, but she was having nightmares about there not being
enough food and she wanted to be sure no one would go hungry--and bread was
an inexpensive food to have too much of.

At that time I had the standard oven in my kitchen (5 loaves fit on one
shelf), the small oven which was in the kitchen when we moved in (3
loaves), and the oven in our housemates' kitchen upstairs (5 loaves).  So I
did 13-loaf batches, using a 6-gallon and a 9-gallon pot in which to mix
the dough and knead it, all my loaf pans (not period, but it was what I did
then) and several borrowed from other people to make 26 pans total.  I
started in the morning the day before the event and took about 9 hours to
get it all done; by afternoon I had one batch being made in one pot,
another in its first rising in the other pot, a third batch rising in 13
loaf pans and a fourth batch baking in the other 13 pans.  About half the
bread got eaten on the day of the event; some of the leftovers went home
with our starving student population and the rest came to our house, to
serve as breakfast for the 60 or so people who slept there.

Elizabeth/Betty Cook


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