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About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

Author Elena Zheleznyak 🔗

Recently I came across the opinion that hand-kneaded bread is a special bread, which is different from mechanically-kneaded bread, and in order to bake bread from hand-kneaded dough, a special suitable recipe is needed. In other words, bread recipes, where kneading the dough should be carried out not with warm hands with love and patience, but with soulless bread makers and mixers, is categorically not suitable. Not suitable for those who do not have appropriate devices in the kitchen or, for ideological reasons, do not want to use them, they say, the dough loves just hands, not hooks. In general, there is some truth in this, of course, but in most cases it is not decisive. Bread, which is kneaded in a mixer or HP, can almost always be baked without resorting to the use of technology and knead the dough by hand, spending a certain amount of time and effort on it. Which one depends on the method you choose.

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

There is also an opinion that recipes for bread that involve hand-kneading practically do not involve kneading. In search of these wonderful recipes, novice bakers are horrified by the confessions that “I kneaded this dough with my hands for 40 minutes!” And think that they certainly do not have the time, energy and desire to tinker with the dough for as long. I don’t know, I will not say about everyone, but I myself was like that, I was afraid and did not want to knead the dough with my hands - exactly until one day I tried and saw with my own eyes how it was changing and what it was capable of. And I assure you: this is a completely magical, meditative, interesting, cognitive and constructive process, when you suddenly realize that it is simply impossible to tear yourself away, that this is “just a little bit more and probably will be enough”, already twenty times passed through my head, and fatigue hands are so nice, and the dough under them is so silky, it's pure delight!

And immediately I want to make a statement)) In fact, nothing new, as always - obvious: any bread dough must be well kneaded, gluten must be developed in it, otherwise you will not get good bread, so it's not possible to cheat... If you just mix the flour and water until smooth, ferment for a couple of hours and bake, you get an unsatisfactory bread. It will float during proofing and baking and crumble during slicing, in addition, the porosity of such bread will be very "smeared" on the cut, and will affect the taste. And it doesn't matter who did not mix it: the baker with his hands or the machine with a hook, the result will be the same. The underdough is noticeably noticeable on wet dough. For example, if the dough for chabatta is not kneaded well, it will be impossible to work with it at all. In addition to the fact that it will be unrealistically sticky, it will spread into a cake in the proofer, and instead of large, beautiful porosity, under the crust you will find a collection of rough, torn pores with thick walls, and the chabatta itself will resemble a rough sole.

How do you determine if the kneading is enough or you still need to sweat? In fact, this can be understood directly by the type and property of the dough, literally feeling it with your hands and looking with your eyes. Kneaded dough of medium consistency, not very thick and not very moist (60-65% moisture), soft and pleasant to the touch, non-sticky, elastic, resilient, and, if rolled into a ball, does not break. All these properties of the dough are provided by the developed gluten, which is capable of stretching. Please note that the same dough at the beginning and at the end of kneading looks very different and has different properties.At the beginning of the kneading, it is very sticky, sticks everywhere, stains everything and leaves traces, at the same time it does not stretch well, and, if it is folded into a ball, it immediately breaks

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

At the beginning of kneading, the gluten in the dough is still very poorly developed, flour and water have just mixed, their molecules have just joined, the flour protein has not yet had time to swell enough and form a "frame" of elastic threads and films. If we go back a step and look at this mass before kneading, then this is what we will see: before combining with water, flour was just an accumulation of tiny particles, in which, of course, there was gluten, but its molecules were chaotically scattered in the flour powder.

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

As soon as they touched the water, the gluten development process started, and we can actively participate in it!

How to do it.

1) Autolysis. The first thing to do with the flour and water for the bread dough is just mix them and forget for half an hour. Many people neglect this stage, but, in fact, autolysis is a great miracle and its importance can hardly be overestimated, especially if the dough is kneaded by hand. This can be called passive kneading: flour and water are roughly mixed to make a lumpy mass, and left for a while so that the flour is moistened and its protein swells.

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

Usually, all the flour and all the water required by the recipe is used, if the dough is sourdough, then the sourdough should also participate in autolysis. First, the sourdough (sourdough dough) is dissolved in water, for which it is very convenient to use a blender, mixer or combine. Then the water is mixed with flour. In this case, the acid of the starter will help the gluten proteins to swell even better and faster, and, accordingly, the gluten will develop faster during kneading. For example, dough WITHOUT SQUARE is better to "rest" for at least an hour so that the proteins swell, but dough WITH SQUARE will be enough for 20-30 minutes, after which all other ingredients can be added to the dough, such as salt, sugar, honey, butter etc.
In general, this method is based on the legendary bread without kneading, when bread dough, including yeast (leaven) and salt, is mixed and left overnight. Overnight, the gluten of the dough develops itself simply under the influence of internal processes, without any participation from the baker.

There is another lazy way to knead bread dough, when you practically do not need to puff and work with your hands - fold it multiple times. With this method, there is practically no need to knead, it is enough to periodically approach the dough and carefully make an envelope out of it. This method is perfectly described in this recipe by the English baker Dan Lepard. The dough is not kneaded at all, it is folded in an envelope at the very beginning, then three similar approaches with an interval of 10 minutes, then two with a 30-minute interval and a few more folds with an interval of 1-2 hours. The only drawback (although very relative) is that you can't really get away from the dough, but, on the other hand, this is a great way to learn such a lazy kneading and clearly see how the dough changes and how it is influenced by “these incomprehensible folds, why, I wonder , they are generally needed. " Here is, for example, the story of one test in pictures

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

By the way, about folding. It is known that in our country it has always been customary to crush the dough, crush, deflate, beat bubbles, sometimes without even rolling it into a ball. But Europeans are characterized by precisely this "folding", careful, neat, so as not to disturb the structure of the dough and preserve bubbles. This is a very simple operation: the dough is laid out on a work surface, dusted with flour or oiled, and stretched into a rectangular layer. Then one side, the one that is closer to itself, is slightly stretched towards itself and transferred to the middle. The same is with the opposite side, only it is stretched already from itself, and is transferred, again, to the middle, with an overlap. The same is with the sides: the left one stretches to the left and is placed towards the center, the right one - to the right, and overlaps towards the center.

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

It turns out a tight envelope, which can be put in this form in a bowl and fermented, or you can still roll it up to get an elastic ball. During these manipulations with the dough, two important things happen: firstly, gluten develops and hardens, and secondly, air is captured, which has a good effect on fermentation and gluten.

In addition to the lazy, there are several active ways to knead bread dough. And if before that it passed the stage of autolysis with sourdough, then further kneading will take only 10-15 minutes of manual work. I'll show you three.

1) First way - the most famous and popular, when the dough is constantly curled inward, stretched under the pressure of the palms, pressed into the table and again curled inward and so on in a circle. It seems to me that we are already born with this knowledge - how to knead the dough, more precisely, how to knead the dough exactly like this, because both children and adults who have never done anything like this in their lives before. For me, an important indicator of the degree of gluten development is the moment when it becomes convenient to work with the dough on the weight, and not on the table or in a bowl (if there is not much dough)).

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

Provided that the dough has passed the autolysis stage at the beginning, kneading will take about 15-20 minutes.

2) The second way is to beat. It is good because it allows you not only to effectively knead the dough in a short time, but also to "let off steam" without getting up in the corner of the boxing ring, if the need is ripe. The dough is taken with both hands, rises up and slams against the table with all its might. Loud BDSCHSCHSCH is heard !!! At this moment, you need to quickly roll the edge of the dough away from yourself or towards you, so that it turns out to be almost a bun, and once again shrink it well, and so on - until you have a perfectly smooth beautiful dough in your hands.

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

3) The third way is washing. It is really similar to how people wash clothes with their hands, the dough is simply rubbed against each other, as if it is being washed. You can rub it on the table, or with both hands against each other, periodically cleaning the table with a scraper. This method is energetic and quite fast, literally in 10 minutes the dough will reach its condition. Unfortunately, I did not manage to film this process, it takes both hands. But the principle, I think, is clear.

At the same time, I want to notethat dough of different consistency will behave differently. For example, moist soft dough with well-developed gluten (for baguettes and chabatta) will stretch into thin films, and when folded, it will give out large thin-walled bubbles in places of folds. A dough of a steep consistency will not be able to do anything like this, but thin transparent, almost flat bubbles will be visible on its surface, it will be soft, smooth, like polished cobblestone, and easily roll up into a ball, without tears. Somehow, trying to figure out when my dough will reach its condition, I kneaded and kneaded a tough dough, tried to stretch it into thin films, but I didn't see anything like it. Yes, in general, I could not see, such a dough is not capable of such "subtleties". Likewise with medium consistency dough. Well-mixed, it will be very elastic and can be folded into an envelope several times without damage, while it will not tear from tension. However, whatever the consistency and moisture content of the dough, before trying to fold it into a ball or stretch it into a film, that is, check how gluten is developed, let it rest and relax, lie down for 15-20 minutes. The dough without rest, being in tension, will strongly resist and tear.

I want to separately note that knead the dough with your hands, that is, it is almost impossible to destroy gluten. But gluten can run out not only from overmixing, it is badly affected by high temperature (closer to 40 degrees), too high acidity and very long resting (on the third day of resting in the refrigerator, the weakening of gluten is already obvious). Here are some pictures as an illustration. This dough fermented for a very long time and became like custard in consistency.

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

If you knead the dough on it, it will tear, the cuts on the bread will disperse ugly, and the bread itself will have coarse porosity.

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

And here overheated dough... Already on the proofer you can see how it breaks. The finished loaf is also indicative.

About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough About hands and hooks - features of kneading bread dough

In general, of course, I would like to dispel stereotypes, if any. Assistants in the kitchen, especially if it is a quality strong technique that you can trust - this is great, it saves a lot of time and helps a lot when every minute counts. I have my bread maker for kneading the dough, which was bought 5 or 6 years ago and is now doing an excellent job of its tasks. And there is a planetary mixer, but more often for some reason I use a bread maker, probably a matter of habit and does not make noise like an airplane taking off. But at the same time, it is imperative to know how to work with the dough, to be able to do it, to feel the dough. Bread is tastier and better from this, the very understanding of bread and its secrets is higher, and this, I confess, is very valuable, this is my own experience.

In general, friends, successful batch))

Newbie
Thank you!
Katusya
Thank you! Very useful and visual information!
Guzel62
And I really liked the article! Useful, but visual. Thank you very much!!!
June
Very very very useful knowledge! Thanks a lot to the author! The dough is really very interesting to work, play, feel!
Erhan
Catherine, thank you for remembering this article, I haven't seen it, and yesterday the bread maker broke down. After reviewing the prices for the equipment, I thought, shouldn't I make the dough by hand.
AnnaL
Thank you for the article!
But I have a question: does the recommendation to pay great attention to kneading the dough apply (judging by the photo) only to wheat bread? Or is rye bread also worthy of such attention?
SvetaI
AnnaL, the processes occurring when kneading rye and wheat dough are very different.
In order not to go into unnecessary details now, I will formulate as follows:
In wheat bread, gluten plays the role of a scaffold that traps the gas bubbles produced by the yeast. Therefore, kneading wheat dough aims not only to mix all the ingredients, but also to develop gluten.
There is very little gluten in rye dough, and there gas is retained mainly by swollen mucus. Therefore, it is enough to mix the rye dough thoroughly until the lumps disappear, and you still cannot develop gluten there. And the consistency of rye dough is completely different - a thick sticky putty.
Therefore, yes, this article is specifically about the dough with a predominance of wheat flour.
And about rye - here:Rye flour dough - properties and features of kneading
Irina Nikolayevna
Thanks a lot to the author! Very useful and useful information.
vmspb
Quote: Admin
kneading the dough with your hands, that is, destroying the gluten, is almost impossible. But gluten can run out not only from overmixing, it is badly affected by high temperatures (closer to 40 degrees)
So, in a bread maker with a custom mode, the more you set the autolysis and kneading time, the better, it only limits the heating of the dough and the oven during kneading?
Admin
Quote: vmspb

So, in a bread maker with a custom mode, the more you set the autolysis and kneading time, the better, it only limits the heating of the dough and the oven during kneading?

Kneading and baking in the oven and in a bread machine are different in nature.

The bread maker is an automatic machine: they set the parameters and it will faithfully execute them to the end, but what will actually happen to the quality of the kneading and baking ... this is the tenth thing "I am not to blame, you set the parameters for me like that"

Another thing is the oven, manual mode: where you can constantly monitor the parameters, and timely observe the process and change them in order to achieve the best goal.

Do you want to use a bread maker, monitor parameters: learn to adjust its settings, interfere with the process, make the oven work according to your rules and technologies, kneading dough and baking.

vmspb
Quote: Admin
make the x / stove work according to your rules and technologies kneading dough and baking.
The question is about that.And a substantive question.

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