Bread pans come in several sizes.....
for my "standard" bread pans I count on about 1 3/4 cups of flour and whatever else is in it to make it bread, for a loaf pan.
In other words I estimate the amount to put into a bread pan by the amount of flour.
A recipe calling for between 5 1/2 and 6 cups of flour will make 3 loaves, one calling for 3 3/4 cups of flour will make 2 loaves...etc.
Linda C

For a recipe using 5-6 cups of flour I get two loaves of standard loaf bread (pan size: 8-1/2" x 4-1/2" x 2/1/2")

The same amount of dough will make two nice-sized round loaves.

4-5 cups of flour gives me between 2-3 dozen dinner-sized rolls depending on how hungry I am when shaping!

/tricia

Thanks for the guidelines. My bread pans must be the quick bread pans. Grainlady, are those weights for dough or the final weight of the loaf? Do they differ? To be honest, I have never considered weighing before or after baking, how smart can that be?

terrapots -

Those are dough weights. They are preceeded by the approximate amount of flour in a recipe it takes to achieve that much dough. You lose a certain percentage of the weight when moisture is expelled during baking, so the end product is lighter than the dough amount.

Using the wrong size pan for the wrong amount of dough is one of the biggest reasons for over- or under- proofing a loaf of bread, creating a mushroom-shaped loaf, or shredding on the sides of the panned loaf.

I use a pullman pan a lot (a bread pan with a lid that bakes crustless, square, sandwich loaves). It requires 1-pound of dough. If I put much more in the pan than that, it will oooz out of any crack during baking. So it's important to weigh the dough amount.

My favorite 100% whole wheat recipe usually makes around 2 pounds 8 oz., so I can do other things with the additional dough if I make a 1# pullman loaf. I can make 6 pecan rolls in a jumbo muffin tin with 1# of dough. With 6-8 oz. of dough I can make 2-4 hot dog buns. 1.5 pounds of dough will make 12 cinnamon rolls. So with one recipe of dough, I usually make several things.

I also scale the dough when making multiple loaves. When they are done they are close to the same size and when you bake them they are done in approximately the same amount of time because they are of equal size.

I also scale each dinner roll, hamburger/sandwich rolls, hot dog buns, etc. I do it so that they are close to the same size and bake evenly, but I also scale these so that I know approximately how much bread there is per serving. I'm a serving-size freak.

-Grainlady

This is wonderful information i must say. Thanks guys,im paul from kenya.

Hi Paul!

This is a very old thread (you can see the date in the upper right corner of each post), so it's great to know it was helpful. Welcome!