On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 17:24:31 GMT, SriBikeJi > wrote:

>Is there anything special one needs to do when doubling a bread recipe?
> Does one just use twice as much of everthing?
>
>I am a novice. After about three tries, and some adjustments, I finally
>settled on a multi-grain bread recipe that I (and my family) like. It
>ends up with the texture of "regular" sandwich bread. But, my recipe
>only makes two loaves.
>
>Yesterday, I doubled the recipe and instead of ending up with 4 clones
>of the nice loaves I had made before, I ended up with 4 pretty dense,
>semi-risen loaves. Edible but heavy.
>
>Here's my basic process: I mix the dough, let it rest for 20 minutes,
>add the salt & knead it, let it rise, shape it into loaves, let the
>loaves rise, and then bake. I use rapid rise yeast.
>
>The only thing I noticed this time around that struck me as different is
>that when I "rested" the dough, the dough had noticeably risen. I am
>sure I let it rest around the same amount of time. I'm not saying that
>this is the only thing that was actually different, I am pretty new to
>this, so I may simply overlooked some key thing.
>
>Any ideas about what I goofed up?

One suggestion is to NOT double the amount of yeast. Yeast does a good
job of multiplying on its own, and the most yeast you need is .5
teaspoon per cup of flour, but once you get to 4 or more cups of
flour, adding more yeast does little except speed up the rise. As a
slower rise gives better flavour most of the time, less yeast means
better flavour, so do NOT double the yeast.

FWIW

rsh