How to bake large batches of bread
If you were going to take the refrigerator approach, it's important to consider when you want to refridgerate it.

Immediately after making the dough, stash two of the doughballs in the fridge.  Take the first one out after about 25-30 minutes, and the second one out after another 25-30 minutes.  This should give you roughly a 30 minute difference between the rising time of the three loaves.  We go slightly under the 30 minutes, as there's a bit of a lag / recovery time for the bread after having been in the fridge.

If you wanted to refrigetate them after the first punching down, you can do it, but that's normally a shorter rise, and it may have some problems fully recovering before you put it in the oven.  It'll work, but you'll get more variation in the loaves than if you had done it immediately after the first kneading.