[Sca-cooks] prep and staging fresh bread at feasts

[Terry Decker]

If these are commercial ovens, they should be able to handle 16 one pound 
loaves each (if you have two racks each).  Baking time is 45 minutes, so 32 
loaves baked per hour.  That makes 3 hours of actual baking, although you 
can open one of the ovens for other things if you bake 80 loaves rather than 
96.  If you are using commercial ovens hopefully you have commercial baking 
sheets available (at least 8), other wise you need to scramble to find 
enough baking sheets ( I personally own six that will fit a standard 
household oven).  A large household oven can handle up to 8 loaves at a 
time.

About 2 hours second rise time with overlap between the batches.  Overlap of 
1 hour into baking.

Two hours to knead and shape.  Overlap of 30 minutes into the second rise 
and 1-2 hour into the first rise.

Four hour first rise overlapping dough manufacture by 1-2 hours.  Dough 
manufacture 2 hours mechanized, 4 hours manual.  It takes a 13qt container 
to hold dough for 8 loaves while rising.

About 10 hours of work to produce 96 basic loaves.  Since I usually have 
access to the kitchens we use at noon on Friday, that's when I start baking. 
With a Hobart, I can cut the prep time and with a convection oven, I can 
better than halve the baking time.  It takes about 20 hours to bake 96 
loaves at home.  I usually do that in two 10 hour days.

You can also cut the onsite baking time in half by preparing the dough 
through the shaping, then freezing it, then putting it out on the baking 
sheets to thaw and rize the second time.  I believe there is an extensive 
discussion of freezing dough in the Florilegium.

Since you admit to having problems with the mechanics of baking, I would 
suggest finding some one who is a baker and talk to them about producing the 
bread and helping you plan what needs to be done.  It may be that you need a 
small group of people to split the breadmaking between.  And if you can't 
make fresh baked, you can always fall back of purchasing bread.

Bear


> The best I have had available is 2 large ovens, eight burners (not that 
> they are needed for bread), about 25' of prep and staging space.
>
> Terry Decker wrote:
>
>> What equipment do you have available and what are the time factors?
>>
>> Bear
>>
>>>
>>> In short, I haven't a clue about how to go about fixing 75-100 loaves of 
>>> bread for a feast (200-300) people. Though I am concerned about the 
>>> actual cooking process (my breads come out as either fluff balls or 
>>> ballast), the mechanics are also overwhelming.