dogmaJul 30, 2023

Knead N minutes → some amazing, miraculous phase change?

https://lemmy.world/post/2360935

Knead N minutes → some amazing, miraculous phase change? - Lemmy.world

This is what every book promised me over the years, and I have never seen anything amazing happen ever. It goes from not very uniform to uniform, but that’s all. After years, I found out about giving the dough a bit of folding, or balling it up, or whatever is fitting, and now it doesn’t take forever, doesn’t stick to my hands, and seems at least as good. Have you seen anything wondrous happen from lengthy hand kneading?

Show threadAuxJul 30, 2023

Kneading time depends on hydration. For a 50% hydration dough you need just a few minutes. For 65% hydration you need about 5-10 minutes. But a lot of people these days make even higher hydration doughs and kneading time can easily be 40 minutes of non stop hard work.

If you want to learn the feel, start with 50% hydration.

Show threaddogmaJul 30, 2023
My experience is that a dry dough has no way to even fold, and just tears the whole time.
Show threadAux
If it tears - it’s not ready. Even pasta dough at 38% hydration is very stretchy and elastic. Just knead longer.
Jul 30, 2023 at 2:53pmWeb
Show threaddogmaJul 30, 2023

38? My goodness.

I begin to wonder whether I was always too vigorous with kneading. I’d grow tired after a few minutes. Breathing hard. I did keep going for ten minutes once and just nothing. But this was before youtube. It could be I was doing it wrong. The text descriptions of kneading were always a bit sparse.

Show threadAuxJul 31, 2023
Well, I don’t know what you’re doing wrong, but kneading definitely works.
Show threaddogmaJul 31, 2023

Is the dough trying to stick to your hand the whole time, or are you using flour or oil or water to prevent it? The old text descriptions would always warn with horror that if you used any flour, you would destroy the proportions, but then whenever I did look at a bread video later on, they’d be working the dough in just a big puddle of flour.

I came to think the warning was because they could only imagine a careless/clueless newbie who would add like a cup of flour over the course of kneading, and were perhaps telling the conscientious baker exactly the wrong thing.

Show threadAuxJul 31, 2023
Sticking is one of indicators of dough development during kneading. Once it stops sticking, you’re pretty much done. If you’re adding additional flour, it will stop sticking due to additional flour, not due to kneading.
Show threaddogmaJul 31, 2023
During the minutes of sticking, do you just develop the strength that you keep going and ignore it? The sticking makes it so much more tiring.
Show threadAuxAug 1, 2023
Yeah, just doing my best to push through. But there’s a cheat code - hand mixer :)