The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

How to knead using stand mixer?

BakerNewbie's picture
BakerNewbie

How to knead using stand mixer?

I'm working on a dough that about 67% hydration + about 7% oil. Initially, it's very wet, so I use a paddle attachment to incorporate all ingredients. Then I switch to the hook attachment to finish off the kneading.

The problem is that it seems to take forever. It took about 20+ minutes of actual kneading on the stand mixer before the dough started to come off the sides of the bowl (I would occasionally stop the mixer to scrape the sides and hook in order to help the kneading process). Once it started to come off the sides of the bowl, I'd stop it every minute or so to do a window pane test. It never got to a nice pane, like this: http://slice.seriouseats.com/images/20100923%20windowpane%202.JPG. Instead, I would kindda get a window pane that would immediately start to break apart. The dough felt rubbery, which seemed to pull back together when I tried stretching it. 

The dough still about doubled in size during the first and second rise. It was still tacky during shaping. I thought the bread would be dense, but it wasn't (I did use a water roux, though).

Any suggestions what's going on with my kneading? How can I improve it? I would rather do this all with the stand mixer and with minimal hand kneading.

emkay's picture
emkay

With 7% oil, is this an enriched or lean dough? 

BakerNewbie's picture
BakerNewbie

I'm not sure what makes an enriched dough. The original recipe calls for flour, water, salt, yeast, sugar, and oil. During my last experiment, I added egg yolks and powdered milk.

emkay's picture
emkay

Lean is typically flour, water, salt and yeast (commercial or natural leaven).  Enriched usually has fat, eggs and/or milk. Add-ins like nuts, fruit, seeds are not considered.

So your dough is enriched. Enriched doughs take some time to develop in a stand mixer, especially home model stand mixers, but your 20 minutes does seem excessive. I can usually get the proper window pane for a brioche in about 10 minutes with my KitchenAid 5 or 7 qt. 

When are you adding the oil?  Depending on how much fat I have in the formula, I wait to add the fat until the dough has developed somewhat. I mix everything except the fat for a few minutes then I add the fat and continue mixing until the dough has absorbed the fat and is developed properly.  

BakerNewbie's picture
BakerNewbie

So add powdered milk (I'm not using fat free; maybe I should? I'm actually just playing around to see how these changes affect the recipe), yolk, and oil after some gluten development? I will try that next time.

Then again, maybe the powdered milk should be added to the dry ingredients? Or should I try fat free powdered milk?

emkay's picture
emkay

When I say add the fat after some development, I meant butter. The fat in the powdered milk doesn't matter.  I'm not sure if adding the oil separately like I would with butter is correct or not but it might help The dough come together.

BakerNewbie's picture
BakerNewbie

What about the egg yolk? Should that be considered a fat, too?

PetraR's picture
PetraR

I would add , for example, Butter piece by piece while the Dough is mixing in the Stand Mixer.

When using oil in my forumula I add the oil to the warm water and add it slowly while the dough is mixing on low speed * in my Kenwood Chef premier that would be setting 1 *.

I never mix in the Stand Mixer for longer than max. 7-10 minutes.

 

BakerNewbie's picture
BakerNewbie

I was thinking of doing an autolyse, so I wouldn't have water to add the oil to anymore.

PetraR's picture
PetraR

You would put all your dry ingredients in your Standmixer, and than add ALL of your Water with the oil added to the dry Ingredients for kneading, mix it so that the flour is all wet  and then Autolyse in the Stand Mixer bowl and after the Autolyse knead.