Scaling A Recipe (merged)

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mish

Washing Up
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Can a recipe turn out correctly if you divide and conquer - or multiply - for the correct amount of servings? My instincts tell me no. Is there an accurate formula or ratio for scaling a recipe? Anyone have a successful method? What have your experiences been when altering amounts? TIA
 
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Baking aside, you can half or double recipes with no problem. Keep in mind that a normal recipe often has the ingredient amounts increased, decreased or eliminated with good results.

Baking is a different issue. As baking recipes are presenting specific chemical reactions to be successful, the relationships of ingredient amounts are much more important.
 
Andy M. said:
Baking aside, you can half or double recipes with no problem. Keep in mind that a normal recipe often has the ingredient amounts increased, decreased or eliminated with good results.

Baking is a different issue. As baking recipes are presenting specific chemical reactions to be successful, the relationships of ingredient amounts are much more important.

Thanks Andy. Maybe I should have been more specific, i.e. if a recipe serves four, and you would like to serve 12 or 25, initially my thoughts are, it won't work by multiplying/dividing. Or, the other way around - if a recipe serves 25 or 50, can you scale it down? Is there a ratio or formula that will work? TIA
 
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My experience is that I have no difficulty doubling, trebling recipes (and that includes baking). I have never gone the other direction though. Sorry mish.
 
mish said:
Thanks Andy. Maybe I should have been more specific, i.e. if a recipe serves four, and you would like to serve 12 or 25, initially my thoughts are, it won't work by multiplying/dividing. Or, the other way around - if a recipe serves 25 or 50, can you scale it down? Is there a ratio or formula that will work? TIA

I understood you and my answer stands.

Consider this:

You have a recipe which serves 4 and you need to serve 12. That's a triple recipe. You can triple all the ingredients and make one big batch or cook three smaller batches using the same amount of the ingredients and mix the three batches together when you're done. There's no difference as long as you have the larger containers to accommodate the larger ingredient amounts.

The same goes for reducing the amounts to cut a recipe for 25 servings down to a smaller size.

Again, I'm not including baking in my response.
 
Andy...why is baking different? I have never had an issue with trebling a cookie recipe for example.
 
A local grocery store gave out a recipe several years ago for one of my favorite cookies = fruit bars. The only problem - it is in a vast quantity and is measured in ounces. I've wanted to have it cut to normal proportions, but haven't found a way to do that yet. I don't trust my measurements in such as baking soda, salt, baking powder, etc. I suppose the only way I will ever make it is if I need a huge amount of the cookies.
 
licia said:
A local grocery store gave out a recipe several years ago for one of my favorite cookies = fruit bars. The only problem - it is in a vast quantity and is measured in ounces. I've wanted to have it cut to normal proportions, but haven't found a way to do that yet. I don't trust my measurements in such as baking soda, salt, baking powder, etc. I suppose the only way I will ever make it is if I need a huge amount of the cookies.

Maybe post the recipe, and we will take a stab at it :)
 
I would never monkey around with quanty re a baking/cake recipe. One of the reasons I asked was because I've seen several restaurant recipes (for large quantities) that I would like to translate for a home cook. The other being, recipes for a home cook serving six, and wondering if they can be duplicated/adjusted to serve i.e. 100. The size of the baking pan, is a given, and sure I would have to adjust cooking time, but still not sure multiplying/dividing ingredients will work.
 
bknox said:
I know when commercial manufacturers scale a recipe they use ratios, 2% of this and 5% of that. I have seen this done when we have used wieghts but am not really sure if you are making soup or bread that uses measurements such as Tablespoons.

Thanks bknox. Good to know. My main concern is for main dishes.:)
 
Alix said:
Andy...why is baking different?...
I'm wondering why baking is different too.

If the original recipe gives ingredients by weight and I have a scale so I can also measure by weight, why wouldn't increasing/decreasing the recipe mathematically work - at least for the ingredients part of the recipe?

(I understand that baking times would have to be adjusted for the modified recipe and that would have to be based on experience or trial-and-error - not math!)
 
My thoughts exactly. Although if I am doubling recipes I frequently would just use two or three pans and keep checking them to see if they were done.
 
Alix said:
Andy...why is baking different? I have never had an issue with trebling a cookie recipe for example.

Alix:

Scaling up a baking recipe can be problematic for a number of reasons. Recipes using yeast or chemical leaveners are especially difficult. A packet of active dry yeast, for example, can handle up to 6 cups of flour but are oftenused for half that amount.

A smaller increase in baking powder/soda is often called for. If doubling a recipe, you probably would only increase the baking powder/soda by 1.5 times.

Also, you have pan size to consider as well as the cooking times.
 
You have be careful about things like salt. As an example I was tripling a baked corn recipe. This was a recipe I had made many times as a regular recipe. I tripled everything. It was way too salty. I fixed it by making up a single recipe with no salt and no salt added corn. I mixed it with the salty triple batch. The next time I added only 1 1/2 times the salt to make a triple recipe and then tasted before adding any more.
 
Thank you Andy. I guess I am lucky I have never had an issue with any of my doubled or trebled recipes. I will pay attention to things like leavener from now on.
 
Andy M. said:
Alix:

Scaling up a baking recipe can be problematic for a number of reasons. Recipes using yeast or chemical leaveners are especially difficult. A packet of active dry yeast, for example, can handle up to 6 cups of flour but are oftenused for half that amount.

A smaller increase in baking powder/soda is often called for. If doubling a recipe, you probably would only increase the baking powder/soda by 1.5 times.

Also, you have pan size to consider as well as the cooking times.

Andy - thanks, that makes sense.

I'm thinking, though, that part of the problem may lie with recipes geared for the home cook (for example, most recipes I see for bread call for waaay to much yeast IMHO).

Re baked goods, what if one started with a recipe for professional cooks that you wanted to scale down? The ones I've seen always have measurements by weight (for example, "Baking and Pastry" by the Culinary Institute of America). Do you think this kind of recipe would scale down more reliably?

I agree baking times would be a challenge - different pan sizes, more/fewer pans in the oven, type of oven - all of this would affect baking time and maybe even initial temp.
 
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