Mass Effect
In "Bread". Hamelman writes that he used to think wrongly that larger batches of dough developed (gluten) faster than smaller batches. However, larger batches of dough do ferment faster.
He explains that smaller batches develop gluten faster because each turn of the mixer in a small batch manipulates a higher percentage of the dough than in a large batch.
He doesn't explain why larger batches ferment faster. He also writes that home bakers who scale down his formulas for commercial batches of 12-15 loaves (I typically divide his metric formulas by 10 for two regular loaves or one double) should increase the amount of sourdough culture by 25%. I've seen other references to the "mass effect" and it certainly is real, especially with sourdough. But why? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth [1] explains
The formula for exponential growth of a variable x at the growth rate r, as time t goes on in discrete intervals (that is, at integer times 0, 1, 2, 3, ...), is
That's fine, but when I run the numbers for different batch sizes that start with the same percentage of culture, the percentage of culture as the dough ferments increases exactly the same across all starting batch sizes.
So what's the source of the mass effect and why are smaller batches more sluggish if they start with the same percentage of culture?
Thanks