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An American relative has asked for an 8.5x4.5in bread pan for Christmas, but UK pan sizes are by weight: 1lb loaf, 2lb loaf, etc.

How much dough would you put into an 8x4 (or 8.5x4.5) pan?

SuperBiasedMan
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Steve Cooper
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2 Answers2

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Unfortunately sorting bread pans by loaf weight is very vague. A 1lb light and fluffy white sandwich bread might have about the same size as a 2lb heavy, dense wholegrain or rye bread. Also, do you expect your bread to rise really high over the rim or should that be more of a limit? In short, the size of "a 1lb bread" depends a lot on the kind of bread you have in mind.

A quick Internet check of pan dimensions from various manufactureres confirms that there is no standard size, it seems they vary by up to 50% in volume.

So if your relative's wish list states a pan of a certain size, I suggets you go shopping equipped with a meassuring tape instead of looking for a certain "pound value".

Side note: Most 2lb pans are a tad bigger that the requested size and 1lb ones a bit smaller, but I found one sold in the UK by Williams Sonoma (what a coincidence!) that seems to have exactly the sought-for dimensions.

Stephie
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Rectangular

11 x 7 x 2 inches 6 cups

13 x 9 x 2 inches 14 cups

28 x 18 x 5 cm 1.4 liters

33 x 23 x 5 cm 3.3 liters

Loaf

8 x 4 x 2 1/2 in. 4 cups

8 1/2x4 1/2x2 1/2 6 cups

9 x 5 x 3 inches 8 cups

20 x 10 x 6 cm 948 ml

21 x 11 x 6 cm 1.4 liters

23 x 13 x 8 cm 1.9 liters

That is the best I can do...

3 1/2 cups of flour is approximately one pound.

Further research and some measuring ...

A 1lb Loaf Pan will have a volume of around 1 litre (or 4 Cups).

You can assume that a Cup is around 240ml, hence the 4 cups to the litre I mentioned above.

Adrian Hum
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  • The volume of yeast breads will be about twice the volume of flour since you rise the dough to double before baking. – Debbie M. Dec 10 '15 at 15:04
  • Also you add water - I'm not sure that the volume of the dough pre-rise is the same as the volume of the flour. – Cascabel Dec 25 '15 at 23:52