Muffin Bread - How to increase the ingredient proportions when increasing the size of the mix

[DoughBoyG]

Hi,

I’m writing for advice on tweaking a muffin bread recipe. It’s base is Fiber One breakfast cereal which I pretty much grind up with a blender. The original recipe from the Fiber One box was for muffins.

I made a few tweaks to this recipe and took to making ever greater quantities. Originally, it was five times the original adapted muffin recipe. Then it was eight. As I ran out of muffin pans, I started using bread tins. Soon I found I preferred the bread to the muffins and now make only breads.

I now intend to make ten times the amount of muffins/breads specified in the original adapted recipe in one bake. My concern is if I should be multiplying all the ingredients in the original adapted recipe by ten. Or, for example, do I need to increase the baking soda by the same amount as I increase the milk and eggs? I also wonder if I can cut down on the brown sugar since I’m on the edge of being diabetic (my fasting blood sugar readings are always pushing 110 and my father had diabetics).

A final issue I have is the baking temperature. I have been using one and two pound baking tins to make my muffin bread with my electric oven set to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. I line the tins with aluminum foil and then grease this foil with lard.

At this temperature, lining and greasing, the muffin bread takes about 45 to 55 minutes, sometimes even more, to bake (defined traditionally as a knife coming out of the bread center clean). Unfortunately, at this temperature and pan lining/greasing, the breads can be blackened or even burnt on the outside.

So I am wondering if I should lower the temperature to 350 degrees Fahrenheit or even 325. I would very much welcome your thoughts and advise on this issue.

As to the balance of ingredients in my recipe, here are the various recipes as I have been using them, including the original Fiber One Recipe.

I would again be grateful for you thoughts and advice as to how I might modify the various ingredient amounts as I increase the overall recipe volume I am mixing at any one time, especially the amount of brown sugar I am adding.

I thank you most kindly in advance for you help and advice. I will very much appreciate it.

Stay well everyone, and keep on baking!

 

[Norcalbaker59]

Recipes are scaled by weight, not by volume. You need to know the baker’s percentages. All bakers the world over use the metric same system to bake. It’s only the American home baker that uses the volume (cups and teaspoons) to bake. And you cannot scale with volume. Plus volume is totally inaccurate. No two cups of flour weigh the same. And different ingredients weigh in differently. Sugar is heavier than flour by volume. What does it mean to pack brown sugar in a cup? Too much sugar can cause a cake to collapse or a crust to become sticky so getting the correct ratio of sugar to flour is important. So weighing ingredients is the method used by bakers.

Baker’s percentages the system of measurement to maintain the ratio of ingredients in the recipe. Baker’s percentages ensures all the ingredients stay in balance with the flour. So FLOUR is always 100%. Other ingredients can be more than 100% the weight of flour. For example, sugar in a chocolate chip cookie is usually equal to or slightly greater than the weight of the flour. But all the ingredients must be weight against the weight of the flour.


Example of a recipe with baker’s percentages in the right column. If a recipe is in weight, you can calcualte the baker’s percentages. If you know the baker’s percentages you can scale it up and maintain the ratios. You cannot scale a recipe in volume

If you divide the weight of each ingredient into to the weight of the flour, you get the baker’s percentage of that ingredient.

300g all-purpose flour — flour is always 100%	100%
14g baking powder	46.6%
7g baking soda	23.3%
2g salt	0.0067%
113g unsalted butter, melted and cooled	38%
200g sugar	66.6%
100g eggs	33.3%
240g buttermilk or whole milk	80%
15g vanilla extract	5%
200g blueberries (fresh or frozen)	66.6%

 

[DoughBoyG]

Hi,

Thank you so very much for introducing me to the concept of baker's percentages. I will now convert my recipe from the cup/spoon measures to weight and then scale upwards using the baker's percentages formula. The funny thing is even though I scaled my recipe up by volume and not weight, the muffin breads still came out tasting very good. It will be very interesting to see how it turns out when I scale by weight rather than volume.

One other question. In my original post I also reported that my breads were often a little burnt, even blackened. What temperature would you suggest for baking my muffin bread and how should the bread tins be prepared. Here what I do now:

my electric oven is set to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. I line one and two pound bread tins with aluminum foil and then grease this foil with lard. It takes about 45-55 minutes for the muffin bread to cook.

A friend suggests that the aluminum foil is causing the blackening and burning. She suggest just greasing and flouring the tins and setting the oven to 325 degrees. What would you suggest.

My thanks again for your great advice. I would never have learnt about baker's percentages if not for you.

 

[Norcalbaker59]

when you convert the recipe to weight, convert the original potions because those are the ratio you need to maintain. It’s really important that you maintain your ratios because do you have a lot of add-ins that are undermining the structure of your loaf. This recipe wasn’t developed as a loaf. Add ins cut through the gluten network and add weight. Biggest problem in multiplying a recipe using volume is maintaining the leavening ratio. You have 1.5 teaspoons baking soda in the original recipe. Weights of 5 g or less can be a little inaccurate on a home food scale. Keep these notations in your baking binder.

1 teaspoon baking soda = 6g

1 teaspoon baking powder = 4 g

if you weigh he ingredients and post here I’ll show you how to scale everything using Baker’s percentages.

Yes 325°F and increasing the bake time is necessary because you have increased the mass significantly. The original recipe was for muffins which have very little mass to bake. Batter bakes from the outside in to the center. The batter that is in contact with the metal bakes and sets first. As the leavening activates the batter rises there’s a process called starch gelatinization that must occur to set batter. Starch gelatinization does not begin to happen until the batter reaches a temperature of 140°F. The more mass in the pan the longer it takes for the batter to reach that temperature. But 140°F only starts the process of starch gelatinization, the batter is not fully cooked until it reaches around 190°F - 200°F. I can’t say for sure what the exact temperature would be for your loaves because it’s a unique recipe given that you’ve added that fiber cereal to it. But most quick bread are done in this temperature range.

You cannot test doneness Initially by inserting a toothpick into the loaf. Use a thermometer. Then once you have bake these a few times at 325°F and you know how you bake then, and what you’re looking for in doneness you can skip the thermometer test.

and yes, covering with aluminum foil is fine, but only towards the later part of baking.

 

[DoughBoyG]

Hi,

Thanks again. You are indeed a font of information. I think I'm pretty well set now for my next bake, which might well be today.

Regarding the aluminum foil. My question was actually about lining the tin, rather than covering the bread.

Presently, I line the tins (which ARE NOT non-stick) with aluminum foil and then grease this foil with lard I've Googled bread tin preparation but the advice is conflicting (I've appended some of the advice I'e found which mostly relates to banana bread).

So far as I can tell the consensus is:

• aluminum foil is little different to parchment paper. You can use either
• whether you use aluminum foil or parchment paper, it should hang over the side of the tin
• it can be greased with lard, but it would make little difference if you used baking oil spray
• whatever grease you use, it should be sprinkled with flour if you use aluminum foil. Parchment paper does not need to be greased
• the muffin bread should be baked on the oven middle rack
• for the last fifteen minutes of cooking, the bread should be covered with aluminum foil
• ten minutes after coming out of the over, the bread should be removed from the tin and placed on a cake tray

Since you seem so very knowledgeable in these matters, I am curious to know what you would recommend and do if you were to use my recipe. As you can see, I intend to stick with aluminum foil greased with lard, but now sprinkled with flour. I will also cover the bread with aluminum foil for that last fifteen minutes of cooking.

I thank you most kindly again for your advice.

The Varying Internet Advice on (Banana) Bread Tin and Oven Preparation

1. Cut parchment paper to fit inside the bottom and sides of the pan
2. 1. Grease base and sides of tin, to help keep paper in place. 2. Lay tin on a piece of greaseproof paper or parchment and measure a strip that’s same size as base but long enough so that it will cover both base and long sides of tin and will sit no more than 2cm (¾in) higher than level of tin. 3. Cut out strip of paper and lay inside tin, covering base and long sides. Put a couple of dabs of butter on top of paper, to help next piece stick. 4. Cut another piece of greaseproof paper that will sit in base again, but is long enough to cover short sides of tin and will sit no more than 2cm (¾in) higher than level of tin. Press into position in tin.
3. Butter, shortening, and nonstick cooking spray all work well. Flour provides an added layer of protection against sticking and makes for an easy and clean release. After greasing the pan, give it a liberal sprinkling of flour, then hold it up and tap and rotate it so that the flour coats all surfaces. To get rid of excess flour, rap the pan upside down over a sink or garbage can.
4. The batter should fill half of an 8-inch loaf pan, or ¾ of a 9-inch loaf pan. If using a glass or a dark metal loaf pan, reduce the temperature indicated in the recipe by 25°F. If baking more than one pan in the oven, make sure that pans are at least 2 inches away from each other and from the oven sides. Keep pans in the middle of the oven. Check doneness in one of several ways when the bread’s color is medium to dark brown: A wooden pick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean (no batter stuck to it). The center crack is dry. The center springs back when you touch it lightly with one finger.
5. For a picture-worthy loaf of banana bread, don't go overboard with greasing your pan. Grease the bottom of the pan just 1/2 inch up the sides for a uniform loaf with a slightly rounded top. If you grease all the way up the sides of the pan, the loaf will have a flat top.
6. Most commercial baking sprays are made with vegetable oil, which makes this a no brainer when it comes to using this as a replacement to grease your pans. All you have to do is pour some of your vegetable oil on a paper towel and rub it along the sides of the pan in order to make sure the whole thing is coated
7. baked goods that you want to intensely brown on the bottom. The top oven rack is great for things you'd like a crusty brown top on
8. These are the basics of oven rack position. A good rule of thumb is that, if it is more important for the bottom to brown while baking, place the rack low. If it is more important that the top brown, place the rack high. ... For most baking, positioning the food in the center of the oven is ideal
9. Arrange a rack in the bottom third of the oven and heat to 350°F. Line an 8x5-inch loaf pan with parchment paper, letting the excess hang over the long sides to form a sling. Spray the inside with cooking spray
10. Parchment paper is basically non-stick baking paper. Usually there's no need to use grease on parchment paper. You can use parchment paper without any grease, spray or oil the pan. But sometimes it depends on what you are cooking

Thanks again for the benefit of your deep knowledge and expertise. I very much appreciate. Indeed, I'm indebted.

 

[Norcalbaker59]

First let’s talk about pans because that’s the most important thing. The worst baking pans are dark metal, anodized aluminum, and/or nonstick coating. And the reason is these types of metals conduct heat more intensely. You have not control. That is why the Recommendation of reducing the temperature by 25°F. But even reducing the temperature produces a lousy result. I bake my cakes at 325°F (160°C), with rare exceptions. The cakes below were make from the same batter, baked at the same time, in the same oven. The only difference was the pan. The light colored cake was baked in a Chicago Metallic light uncoated metal; the over-baked, over-brown crust, dried out piece cake was baked in an Fat Daddio anodized aluminum cake pan. I actually had to pull the Fat Daddio cake out of the oven before the the Chicago Metallic cake because it was so over-baked. Your tools are important.



I was baffled when I watched a video of Chris Kimball from America’s Test Kitchen discuss baking. On the issue of cake pans he recommended dark metal because they brown better. I think every pastry chef in world who saw that burst out laughing. I don’t know of any bride who has ever ordered a brown white wedding cake. There’s a line of cake pans called Parish Magic Line that has a cult like following among wedding cake bakers because the uncoated metal creates a pristine cake.



As I mentioned the batter in contact with the metal will heat first. And the batter goes through a process of protein denaturation (both in the wheat and egg) and starch gelatinization (flour) that are critical in creating structure in the baked good. These happen at different temperatures. If the tin is too hot, the batter in contact with the tin heats up too fast, and these chemical reactions or trigger too soon. The batter bakes and sets.



But the batter in the center is still unbaked. The leavening is still very active, in the center continues to rise. In the heat of the oven also continues to bake the exterior top. The batter pushes up through the center and cracks the top.



So you end up with a loaf or cake that has low sides. A mound in the center. A deeply cracked top. Over browning on all sides, bottom, and top.



If you go into a commercial bakery you’ll see that their baking sheets and pan are uncoated aluminum. They don’t conduct heat very well. And that’s what you want, because you have much better control over your baking.



NordicWare makes a line called Naturals. I prefer Chicago Metallic uncoated. You can’t get their actual commercial line anymore without going through a restaurant supplies store. Most of stuff they sell for the home market is coated. There’s still a few uncoated pieces in the Chicago Metallic Commercial II that’s pretty good. But within that line there’s some odd variations.



I have both Chicago Metallic the actual commercial line as well as the home line. I also have some of the NordicWare Natural. I tend to use the Chicago Metallic more than anything else. I also have a few Magic Line cake pans. They are more expensive and more difficult to locate. Perrish is only available through restaurant supply stores and speciality cake supply stores. Be careful about buying on Amazon because they sell a lot of counterfeit products. The Chicago Metallic store on Amazon is Chicago Metallic’s store, so they are legit. But Perrish does not sell directly do the public, so I recommend buying online through a brick and mortar store. NordicWare is readily available at most big box stores like bed bath and beyond, and Target.



My preference for lining is always parchment paper. and the reason is parchment paper does not absorb heat. Aluminum foil absorbs heat. Baking is a chemical reaction of all the ingredients to time and temperature. The pan/baking sheet is a conductor of heat. When you add foil you’re adding another element of heat.



There’s no need to grease parchment paper. It will peel off when the loaf is cooled. But why are you even lining the loaf pan? You do not need to line a loaf pan. To prevent sticking, just use baker’s grease.



Just mix equal parts of shortening, vegetable oil, and flour by weight. Place it in an sterile airtight jar put it in the refrigerator. Use a clean spoon to scoop a little into a dish. Use a pastry brush to apply it to your baking sheet/pan. You don’t even need to flour. I guarantee nothing will stick with baker’s grease.



You cannot use a toothpick to test banana bread for doneness. I guarantee the toothpick will come out clean, yet the banana bread will be raw inside. you need to bake it to 190°F. Banana bread batter is very dense. It needs to bake a good 60 mins. Whether it cracks on top depends on how it’s mixed. Mine does not crack because I use the creaming method.



only difference between these two cakes was top layer was baked in an different type of pan

banana nut bread doesn’t crack; depends on how its mixed. Notice the small holes? That’s from the thermometer. I baked this loaf to 200°F. Should’ve baked it to 190°F.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Chicago+metallic+uncoated&ref=is_s





https://www.sweettreatsupply.com/parrish-magic-line-cake-pans-s/1828.htm

 

[DoughBoyG]

Hi,

Thanks again for your advice. I’ve decide to buy the Chicago Metallic bread tins. I’ve found them on Amazon, Walmart and Bed, Bath and Beyond, I have my suspicions about the authenticity of some of the ones on Amazon. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find the Chicago Metallic store that you mentioned in your last post. Equally, unfortunate is that the Chicago Metallic website is down right now, so I can’t do any checking there. Is the genuine one on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Meta...icago+metallic+uncoated&qid=1590344369&sr=8-7

Now I’m much better informed, can I take you upon your earlier kind offer to scale up my recipe? Here is my recipe in weight as well as volume: I now want to scale this batter mix up by a factor of ten.

Brown Sugar	6.00	ozs	1.00	Cup
Milk	13.00	ozs	1.50	Cups
Oil	2.00	ozs	0.25	Cups
Fiber One	5.00	ozs	2.50	Cups
Flour	8.50	ozs	2.00	Cups
Baking Soda			1.50	Tsps
Salt	0.50	ozs	0.50	Tsps
Eggs	2.50	ozs	1-2
Cranberries	4.50	ozs	1.00	Cup

The only ingredient I could not measure as a weight was the baking soda. 1.5 teaspoons of baking soda just does not register on my scale. So what would suggest I should do when I scale this recipe up by a factor of ten? I also wonder if I should add some yeast to the mix so my muffin bread might rise a little. A good idea?

For your reference I’ve also included in the this post, both my muffin bread recipes and the Fiber One recipes I used to create my muffin bread recipes. Of the two muffin bread recipes I’ve posted, one is for the original one batch recipe. The other is for the ‘eight’ batch recipe I’m using now. As I explained in my first post, I simply, and mistakenly upped my single batch recipe by multiplying the volumes by a factor of eight. As you explained, I should instead have increased the ingredients by their proportion to the flour weight. The odd thing is that even though I scaled the recipe up the wrong way, my muffin bread, still tastes great both to myself and my wife and a friend. I wonder if this is just because I might have way too much brown sugar in it and anything sweet always tastes good!

	Amount	Amount$	Original Fiber One Recipe%		Current Fiber One Recipe#
Ingredients	One batch	Eight batches	('12 regular size muffin cups)		('12 regular size muffin cups)
Brown Sugar	1.00	Cup	8.00	Cups	1/2 cup packed brown sugar	1/2 cup packed brown sugar
Milk	1.50	Cups	12.00	Cups	2/3 cup milk	11/3 cups milk
Oil	0.25	Cups	2.00	Cups	1/4 vegetable oil	1/4 vegetable oil
Fiber One*	2.50	Cups	20.00	Cups	1 cup Fiber One	11/4 cups Fiber One
Flour	2.00	Cups	16.00	Cups	13/4 cups all purpose flour	11/4 cups all purpose flour
Baking Soda	1.50	Tsps	12.00	Tsps	3 tsps baking powder	3 tsps baking powder
Salt	0.50	Tsps	4.00	Tsps	1/2 tsp salt	1/4 tsp salt
Eggs	1-2		10		2 eggs	1 large egg
Cranberries	1.00	Cup	1.50	Bags	1/2 cup cranberries	1/2 cup raisins
	1/4 cup granulated sugar
* 2.5 cups of fiber one weights 5 ozs
% this is the Fiber One recipe I used as the basis for my current muffin bread recipe. It comes from an old Fiber One cereal box. As well as the ingredients listed above it included the following which I left out for reasons of taste:3/4 cup chopped apple,1/2 cup finely shredded carrot, 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. The oven temperature was 375 degrees. The name of tis recipe was, 'Morning Glory Muffins'.
# from the current Fiber One cereal box
$ Current recipe. I mean to increase this to ten times the original recipe

Two final questions.

1. Firstly, my oven will allow me to bake three tins of muffin bread at a time. Is a good or bad idea to bake three breads at a time? If so, how, if at all, should I adjust the temperature?
2. How much of the bread tine should be filled with the batter?

Thanks again, for your generosity in sharing your obvious very extensive knowledge with me.

Have a great memorial day.

 

[Norcalbaker59]

Sorry for the delay in responding. For some reason I did not see this...a senior moment I guess. Let me scale the recipe and I will answer all your questions when I post the recipe.

 

[DoughBoyG]

Hi,



Thanks for getting back to me. I very much appreciate it.



I’ve been thinking some more about my recipe. My last batch was very successful , at least in terms of how it tasted. I want to increase my next bake by twenty-five percent from this recipe. So rather than going back to the original Fiber One recipes or my original batch of one mixture (which I later scaled by volume to batches of five and eight), I think it would make more sense to work off my last recipe using the bakers percentages method. When I do this I get the following ingredient proportions.

					Proportion to flour by weight	Current Recipe increased by 25% based on ingredient proportions (to the flour)
Current Recipe​
Ingredients	Volume	Weight	Volume	Weight
Brown Sugar	8	Cups	56.0	ozs	70%	70	ozs	10	Cups
Milk	12	Cups	104.0	ozs	130%	130	ozs	15	Cups
Oil	2	Cups	15.5	ozs	19%	19	ozs	2.5	Cups
Fiber One*	20	Cups	40.0	ozs	50%	50	ozs	25	Cups
Flour	16	Cups	80.0	ozs	100%	100	ozs	20	Cups
Baking Soda	12	Tsps	2.0	ozs	3%	2.55	ozs	15.0	Tsps
Salt	4	Tsps	0.8	ozs	1%	1	ozs	5	Tsps
Eggs	13		27.6	ozs	35%	35	ozs	16
Cranberries	8.0	Cups	32.0	ozs	40%	40	ozs	10	Cups

Does this look right to you? I wonder if I’ve got the baking soda too high.



Thanks again for all your help.

 

[Norcalbaker59]

Hi,



Thanks for getting back to me. I very much appreciate it.



I’ve been thinking some more about my recipe. My last batch was very successful , at least in terms of how it tasted. I want to increase my next bake by twenty-five percent from this recipe. So rather than going back to the original Fiber One recipes or my original batch of one mixture (which I later scaled by volume to batches of five and eight), I think it would make more sense to work off my last recipe using the bakers percentages method. When I do this I get the following ingredient proportions.

					Proportion to flour by weight	Current Recipe increased by 25% based on ingredient proportions (to the flour)
Current Recipe​
Ingredients	Volume	Weight	Volume	Weight
Brown Sugar	8	Cups	56.0	ozs	70%	70	ozs	10	Cups
Milk	12	Cups	104.0	ozs	130%	130	ozs	15	Cups
Oil	2	Cups	15.5	ozs	19%	19	ozs	2.5	Cups
Fiber One*	20	Cups	40.0	ozs	50%	50	ozs	25	Cups
Flour	16	Cups	80.0	ozs	100%	100	ozs	20	Cups
Baking Soda	12	Tsps	2.0	ozs	3%	2.55	ozs	15.0	Tsps
Salt	4	Tsps	0.8	ozs	1%	1	ozs	5	Tsps
Eggs	13		27.6	ozs	35%	35	ozs	16
Cranberries	8.0	Cups	32.0	ozs	40%	40	ozs	10	Cups

Does this look right to you? I wonder if I’ve got the baking soda too high.



Thanks again for all your help.

I think you are missing the point of baker’s percentages. The baker’s percentages allows you to scale the recipe to any amount of batter you want. But you have the ratio of all ingredients to flour correct for 1 loaf.

You begin with 1 loaf that has the ratios all worked out.

That’s what I need to 1 loaf. So how many loaves are you making with this recipe?

 

[Norcalbaker59]

Also baking soda alone is also not a good choice for quick breads. Because of the amount needed for leavening, you run the risk of bitterness. It’s better to use a combination of baking soda and baking powder.

but I need to know what this yields because the whole point of scaling a recipe is create the perfect ratio for one loaf, or one batch of muffins, or cookies, not eight or ten or dozen. And from that single loaf/batch that’s where you scale the recipe.