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The baking instructions for one Pumpkin Bread Pudding is 350° for 30-40 minutes.

Would the time change for baking three at the same time, 1lb 4oz each? Would the baking time remain the same or would the time increase?

Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL
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Dwane Brenneman
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    Just for clarification: three individual bread puddings or triple the amount in one large pan? – Stephie Oct 29 '16 at 20:35
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  • Is 1.25 lbs the normal weight for a single one of these (the one that requires 30-40 minutes)? Remember that time is always an estimate anyway... – Catija Oct 30 '16 at 00:25

2 Answers2

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It mostly depends on whether you're able to arrange them in the oven with plenty of space. If they all fit on one rack, with a few inches between the pans, it should be basically the same baking time. They're all still in an oven of the same temperature they'd be in if baked alone.

But if things get crowded, especially if you have to put them on the top and bottom rack, with one at least partially over another, then you may need increased baking time. They'll essentially shield each other, i.e. the air will end up a little bit cooler in the area between them. In that case you'd probably also want to rotate and shuffle them around once or twice during baking, to avoid them browning more on the exposed parts and less on the shielded parts.

The oven will also take slightly longer to come back up to temperature with more in it, but likely on the scale of a difference of a minute or two as long as it's a completely preheated full-size oven, so for something that's baked 30-40 minutes you don't really need to worry about. The most direct information I found about this was from BakeWise:

Even if you have a well-preheated oven, if you open the oven door ... (the time that the oven was open can be over 1 minute) the drop in the oven temperature can be 175F/79C). Recovery time can be several minutes.

So having more bread puddings does extend that recovery time, not just by putting cold mass in the oven, but also by requiring the door to be open longer while you're loading them into the oven. But again in this case that's not the important factor; even if it adds a couple minutes to the baking time, you still need to worry more about the air circulation, and you were already checking in a 10 minute range anyway.

Cascabel
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Oven is on temperature control. Unless the oven is so crowed to limit air circulation the time is the same.

The thermal shock from the pudding is insignificant. The oven can deliver the heat to cook the pudding or not. All the oven has to do is bring the air back up to temp. At 2' x 2' x 2' and a 2015 watt oven it takes about 20 seconds to bring the air from 70 F to 350 F. After that the oven does not need to deliver 3x the heat as the heat loss to the room is still the same. It is not like blanching or deep frying where there is rapid heat transfer and the medium started at temperature. When you open and close the oven the room air is exchanged so with 1 pudding or 3 the air temperature starts at close to room temperature. The oven quickly returns the air to cooking temperature and cooking begins.

two loaves of bread

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paparazzo
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    Wouldn't three times the cold mass added to the oven slow its return to the target baking temperature? A cold mass changes the oven's ability to heat. – Catija Oct 30 '16 at 13:17
  • @Catija Really 2.5 extra lbs of pie is going to have a significant impact on temperature? An oven that can deliver the heat cook a 20 lb turkey is going to be stressed by 2.5 extra lbs of pie? – paparazzo Oct 30 '16 at 13:57
  • While I agree in general that ovens don't need terribly long to come back to temperature, your numbers are a bit misleading. Ovens don't just magically dump their maximum power into all of the air at once, it does actually take some time for it to propagate through the whole oven. In any case, it'd probably be more helpful to focus on how much crowding it takes to obstruct air circulation enough to affect things, since that's what's actually going to determine whether the OP needs to increase the baking time. – Cascabel Oct 30 '16 at 18:33
  • @Jefromi See my answer "Unless the oven is so crowed to limit air circulation the time is the same." And most ovens indeed have an on / off controller that that does pretty rapidly max heat. Yes recovery time is effected by heat transfer from element to air but that time is totally not effect by 1 pudding versus 3, – paparazzo Oct 30 '16 at 19:02
  • Exactly: it'd help the OP more if you explained that more fully. But no worries, I went ahead and wrote an answer to cover it. (And yes, there *are* effects from having three puddings: the air transfers heat to the puddings, so the air's temperature is reduced. Again, I agree that the recovery time isn't a big deal, I'm just saying your 20 seconds is the optimistic perfect case, not the reality.) – Cascabel Oct 30 '16 at 19:05
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/47734/discussion-between-jefromi-and-paparazzi). – Cascabel Oct 31 '16 at 01:22