path: root/02-16-mixing-and-dough-development.md

#### Mixing and Dough Development

This is the part of baking that is intimidating to many new bakers,
and it doesn't need to be. Please take a few minutes to read this
section and begin to learn what the dough should feel like and how to
get it feeling like it is well developed. Many of us started baking by
using a bread machine or a Kitchen Aid stand mixer to mix and knead
the dough. While this works reasonably well, and other methods are
described below, you will learn more quickly how the dough should feel
in the different stages of development if you use the tools god gives
us, our hands. For thousands of years humans have made good bread
using only a crude bowl and their hands as tools. While commercial
bakeries don't have the time to hand mix and shape thousands of loaves
daily, much of what is wrong with commercial bread starts here in the
first phase of bread making.

**Mixing:** Start by gathering all of the needed ingredients for the
recipe. If you are making a basic French style bread that uses
just the basic four ingredients (flour, water, salt and yeast),
measure or better, weigh each item carefully ahead of time and
have it in front of you ready to use. This might seem like over
simplifying this procedure but I can tell you from experience you
will forget the salt or pour all the water in without having
measured it or can't remember some additional ingredient, if you
don't get organized, first.

In a large bowl, add all of the dry ingredients first and stir or mix
them together well. This means that Instant Dry Yeast and salt are
added to the flour and any other dry ingredients you may be using with
your recipe.

If you are using Active Dry Yeast, the directions for re activating
this type of yeast call for adding the yeast to a cup or so of the
water (warmed) needed for the recipe  5 or 10 minutes ahead of mixing
the dough. If you are using Cake Yeast, crumble it with and into the
flour using your fingers. 

Continuing; Next, add all of the water and begin combining the flour
into the water. You can use your fingers, (yes it will be a mess but
it is supposed to be) or a spoon to accomplish this first mixing.
Wood, Stainless Steel, Plastic, any kind of spoon or bowl will do
fine. When the mixture is mostly a shaggy mass and looks like most of
the dry flour is combined into the mass, you can stop, clean your
hands over the bowl and cover the bowl with a plastic bag or a damp
towel or plastic wrap. Plastic grocery bags are my favorite. Wait at
least 15 minutes and as long as an hour for the flour to absorb the
water. When you come back to the mix, it won't feel anything like it
did after first mixing. Scrape everything you can onto a clean counter
and quickly clean and dry the mixing bowl.

**Kneading or Developing:** This is the fun part of bread making.
You are starting with a mixture of flour, water, salt and yeast.
At the moment it is just those things put together in a bowl. We
need to develop these things into something more, a smooth dough.
The best way to show you or tell you how to accomplish this is
with a video. There are many video clips that show similar
techniques but this one I like the best.  Richard Bertinet has
produced an excellent video with Gourmet Magazine that shows the
mixing technique above, and the slap and fold kneading technique
that many of us now use in some form or another. I urge you to
watch this video and learn to do this maneuver with the dough. As
you will see in the video, the dough gradually comes together and
becomes smooth and flexible. Bertinet is making a sweet dough
with eggs and sugar but the method works on any kind of dough or
bread type. Finish by rounding and putting tension on the outer
skin of the dough and forming a ball.

Once the dough is well developed, smooth and rounded, lightly oil
the now clean mixing bowl with a few drops of oil on your fingers
(or lightly spray regular cooking oil into the bowl) and place
the dough into the bowl, seams down and roll the ball around to
coat all the surfaces. Cover the bowl as before during what is
called the Primary Ferment.  During the primary ferment, the
dough will expand in volume as the yeast begins to eat the sugars
in the flour and create Carbon Dioxide. Your well developed dough
will trap those CO2 bubbles and form pockets that will become the
air pockets in the bread, making it lighter.

NOTE: For Whole Grain and Multi-Grain breads, It is advisable to
not try and develop the dough entirely by kneading. The sharper
grains will cut the gluten strands and allow the CO2 gas to
escape. A Stretch and Fold will often work as well, done during
the primary ferment. A link to this procedure is provided below.

You can always come back to using some appliance to mix and knead
your dough. In fact some doughs are somewhat better suited to
machine mixing, but not many. You can easily produce wonderful
bread in the manner of our ancestors.

Once the dough has doubled in volume you are ready for the next
step, shaping.

There are a number of ways to develop dough.  The easiest is
probably to put it in a KitchenAid-type mixer. About 8 to 10
minutes of mixing the ingredients in a KitchenAid on low speed
will generally do the trick.

There's no need to buy a KitchenAid, though, to make good bread.
Here are three ways of developing dough by hand.

**Traditional Kneading:** Use this method when the dough will rise
fairly quickly (1-2 hours for the first rise) or if I’m in a
hurry to get it developed.

First, mix the ingredients with a spoon until everything is hydrated.
Cover and wait about 15 to 20 minutes – this way, you’ll let the water
do most of your work for you (if you don’t have time for this step,
feel free to skip it – you may have knead just a little more,
though). After this waiting period is done, scrape the dough
out of the bowl onto a smooth surface, and push on the down
and forward with the heels of your hands. Fold it up back on
itself, give the dough a quarter turn, and repeat.

Knead for about 4-5 minutes, and then cover it. Let it rest about
5 minutes, and then knead once again for 1-2 minutes. It should
be well developed at this point.

One way to test dough development is to tear off a small chunk
and then gently stretch it. If the dough is ready, you should be
able to stretch it thin enough so that it becomes translucent.
This is called the “windowpane” test.

**Stretch and Fold:** This method adds about an hour to the rise of
an ordinary yeasted loaf, but when you’re working with sourdoughs
or yeasted breads that have a long rise anyway, it doesn’t make
that much difference. And it takes hardly active time at all –
just a few minutes total.  Really!

Mix the ingredients with a spoon until hydrated. Cover and wait
30 minutes to 1 hour. After this rest, scrape the dough out of
the bowl and stretch it to about twice its length, if possible.
For the first fold, the dough will still be pretty shaggy, so
only go as far as you can without ripping. Fold the dough like a
letter, give it a quarter turn, and then stretch and fold once
again.  Place it back in the bowl and cover.

Repeat this folding process twice more with 20-30 minutes in
between each one.

More information and a video may be found here:
<http://www.sourdoughhome.com/stretchandfold.html>

**Stretching and Folding Illustrated:** Here is the Stretch and Fold
method illustrated by Mebake (Khalid). He has artfully depicted
the process of keeping the dough in the bowl while developing the
gluten and incorporating air into the dough. This easy to do
technique is employed by many members here and allows the baker
the opportunity to develop the gluten in a bowl during
fermentation with little effort and no mess. Once you understand
how this works, I'm sure you will use it every time.

**French fold:** This is a great, quick method for developing dough,
but it requires a relatively long rest after everything is
hydrated, so it's most appropriate for doughs with a long bulk
rise.

Once everything is hydrated, cover and let the dough rest for a
least an hour.  Remove the dough from the bowl onto a smooth
surface.  With one hand on either side of the dough and your
thumbs underneath, stretch the dough parallel to your body while
simultaneously folding it in half along its length with your
thumbs.

Give the dough a quarter turn, pick it up, and then throw it down
onto the surface, smooth side down.  Really, smack it down.
Stretch it again while simultaneously folding it over with your
thumbs, make another quarter turn, and give it yet another smack
with the smooth side down.

Do this about 10 times, and you’ll have a well developed dough.
If it doesn't seem as developed as you'd like or if it starts to
tear, let it rest for 5 minutes, and repeat.

A good video of this technique may be found here: 
<http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/video/2008/03/bertinet_sweetdough>

**An alternative method:** that keeps the dough in the bowl and all of the
kneading is done there.

I use my fingers and scrape the dough into a single lump and flatten
it and then fold it in half, turn it a quarter turn and fold again and
flatten it.  I continue this for about twenty folds.  Often it gets
very stiff and needs to rest for a few minutes to relax.  As noted the
dough will let you know when you have done enough.  This stretches the
original surface a million times the size it was at the start and
assures a complete blending of the ingredients.  I use this method
because it confines the mess and permits making bread in less than
ideal places.  See the illustration mentioned above for a pictorial
that describes this process.

There is no wrong way to knead bread but some ways are much
better than others.  Some breads benefit from special kneading
and handling and some are very hard to get wrong.  Before
kitchens and mechanical mixers and tables there were dough
troughs and all of the mixing and kneading was done there.
You could make bread in a dough trough and bake it on a hot
flat stone on an open fire.

**No knead bread:** For bread mixes that use very little leavening
and are fairly wet, time provides the development.  Simply mix
everything up until hydrated, cover and go to sleep.  Anywhere
from 12 to 18 hours later, give the dough one stretch and
fold, shape as necessary, and then let it rise a couple of
hours until it’s ready to bake.  Learning to use a plastic
scraper to handle dough in the mixing bowl, as described
below, is a big help.

**Alternative video:** If you are just a little adventurous, Check
out this excellent video
(<http://www.thebackhomebakery.com/Tutorials/NoKnead.html>), provided
by Mark Sinclair of The Back Home Bakery.  Mark demonstrates folding
in the bowl using a plastic scraper over a period of time to develop
strength in the dough.  This and all of Marks videos are excellent
training aids.