I only joined this site yesterday so I'm still finding my way around.. I did find info and videos about stretch and fold very interesting.

I made some white bread today, just simple white bread flour, yeast, olive oil, a little salt, sugar and milk/water recipe. No measurements, just eyeballed everything.

I used the stretch and fold method of kneading for the first time to see what difference it would make. (by the way I usually have a wettish dough rather than a stiff dough, easier to work and softer bread which hubby and father in law like.)

I found the stretch and fold much easier and the bread rose beautifully, nice and steady...

I made two medium sized loaves and a french stick.

They both loved the bread, the texture was perfect. Nice and soft inside, no BIG holes, as I said, they loved it. So, success so far and only one small change done.

I plan on learning much more about the different types of bread, the different methods such as sourdough, and also we're building an earth oven this year so I'll be learning to bake bread and other baked goods in that oven too.

It's going to be very interesting learning here.

Aran

I am due to have a mastectomy early in New Year, but cannot bear the thought of giving up bread baking. Am I unrealistic to think that I could use the stretch and fold technique over  several hours with very little heavy physical work? I've been told to expect tiredness or even exhaustion. But if people can help with the washing up and carrying I reckon I could do something? Any ideas please? 

Hello! I'm new to breadbaking, and I'm confused. I followed the SourDo Lady's starter and basic bread instruction, and my bread tastes awesome and the crumb seems ok, but it's spreading and not rising enough for my liking. Based on what I've read here, I think I'm messing up the fermentation time, flour protein level, or my oven temp is off as I'm waiting for a thermometer to arrive. As I'm in an new country, I also have no idea about the flours I'm using (harina integral mixed with tipo 000). It's a fun mess and I want to eliminate one variable at a time. There are a lot of unknowns and future experiments in perfection waiting, but I'm pretty happy that the bread is gobbled up by my testers. I want to get the rise to improve so that I can try this one with more ingredients!  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/12819/potatonut-bread-south-tyrol-thanks-salome

However, I'm confused about a few things:

1. What is the difference between refrigerating dough over night with one stretch and fold vs. stretch and fold immediately 3x for 45 min, then refrigerating?

2. I keep forgetting to incorporate the butter/salt/sugar in a timely fashion. What happens to the gluten if I'm adding butter/salt/sugar in after it's risen 1-2 times? What happens if I added nuts or seeds at this points, since most recipes seem to want a first rise without that stuff? I don't really understand the rise of breads with mixing stuff in, or even if you're supposed to poke air out, then put it in the oven. See next question.

3. I accidentally collapsed my friends yeast based dough - she had let it rise twice. So, I did a few stretch and folds, and stuck it next to the other one in the oven. Her previously risen bread stayed inert when baked. The one I reformed started much smaller and grew almost to the same size as the other. How does that happen?!?!

Thank you so much for any tips!

Jessica in Buenos Aires

A lot of experienced bakers on this forum sing the praise of stretch and folds for gluten development, workable wet dough and open crumb. I understand the concept, and I think it's pretty darn smart. Problem is, I cannot do it because of my handicap.

I have this brand new KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer that easily kneads a high hydration dough for a long time, without heating up. I followed the discussions in the forum, but most focus on S&Fs as an alternative to extensive mixing.

My question is: Can the KitchenAid be a viable alternative to S&Fs for great French bread or baguettes?

Can I get a workable wet dough and open crumb by only kneading in the stand mixer? How long would you recommend? I began noticing a real difference in Peter Reinhart's focaccia dough from BBA when I mixed it for 20 minutes. I didn't S&F it afterwards and it came out pretty good; light and fluffy, like eating a piece of cloud! 

But how would French bread do under the extensive handling by the stand mixer? Thanks!

I want to learn more about S&F. I like the method. The dough feels good.

I've looked at other threads but not found the answers to two questions:

First, in ABED some breads call for S&F and others for kneading. Besides rich doughs preferring to be kneaded, what about the dough or formula might tell you to use one method over the other? For example, the wild rice & onion is kneaded, but the WW is stretched. I'm thinking about it in regards to working with older recipes, and rather than blindly experimenting, I'd like to understand more about the likelihood of success. Then I'll experiment.

And second, some bakers seem to use longer intervals, up to 30-45 minutes, between folds. All the recipes in ABED call for being done in 40. Why?

Thanks for your insight.
Jerry

I'm in the middle of attempting to convert Reinhart's WGB recipe for transitional (50% whole wheat) whole grain to a higher hydration bread, using the "stretch and fold" with overnight fermentation method from his Artisan Breads Every Day book.  

I have tried the ABED book's method a few times now.  But I have only tried that with up to 20% whole wheat flour.  This book it doesn't have much detailed advice about adapting it to whole wheat or whole grain breads.  I'm trying a whole grain "struan" type hearth bread with this method and the hydration percentage (80%) he gives for the whole wheat bread in ABED.  

I'm hoping some of you might have tried something like this already, and can help me avoid any pitfalls I haven't anticipated.

I have steered back from the 100% whole wheat versions (a little too dense, and not enough oven spring) to a 50% white 50% whole wheat recipe.   A recipe that has worked many times for me is using the WGB method of soaking grains and whole wheat flour, using cooked Kashi grains and a little rye flour and a little cornmeal in a soaker, and using my very vigorous sourdough starter instead of a biga. 

But this WGB recipe is only about 61% hydration.  The whole wheat recipe he gives in ABED is 80% hydration (I wish he gave bakers percentages in that book BTW.)  

I have adapted it by adding to the soaker enough extra water to make total hydration in the final dough 80%.  I also added about half of the "extra whole wheat flour" he adds in WGB when combining everything, and will add the rest of it as white flour when combining.  I figure that soaking all the whole wheat flour will soften the bran better.

I added the extra water to the soaker this morning.  I'll put the dough together this evening.  I'm worried that this method and high hydration will be extra extra sticky.  I think I can handle that; use Kitchen Aid for mixing and most of the kneading; oiled counter and hands for folding).

But will the high hydration make a freestanding loaf (raised in bannetons) too weak to hold up a dough with44% white flour, 22% whole wheat flour and and 33% grains?

I'm hoping that higher hydration will improve the crumb texture and also enable a higher oven spring.  But will lots of grain weight defeat that?

I could add more white flour when combining the final dough, but that might defeat the whole purpose of the higher hydration dough I'm hoping to make.

Advice from those who have attempted similar breads would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

I understand that the purpose of the stretching and folding of the dough during fermentation is to strengthen it and to align the gluten strands. Hamelman and many others advocate stretching and folding the dough on the bench in 2 directions perpendicular to each other in essence keeping it on the X and Y axes. James MacGuire advocates stretching and folding the dough in the bowl rotating it 180 degrees so essentially creating multi-directional axes. Does anybody know if in theory the 2 methods will produce the same results as far as elasticity, extensibility, oven spring and openess of crumb is concerned? Is it possible that the Hamelman method is better for elongated bread such as baguettes and batards while the MacGuire method is more suited for round loaves like boules and miches? Any thoughts and comments are welcomed. Thanks.

Don

Hi everyone,

I need your input about folding techniques. I use a the simple stretch and fold method, 3 times at 30 minutes intervale, for very wet dough but can I use the same technique for dough with less hydratation, like french bread? My wrists are very week because of arthritis and it will be less painfull for me to do 3 stretch and fold vs 10 minutes of kheanding . 

  Thanks

In a recipe I found on this forum the procedure ask for:

''Using a rubber spatula or a plastic scraper, stretch and fold the dough 30 times''

I use the strectch and fold technique when I make BBA's Pain à l'ancienne but I am not familiar with this procedure. Is there a video that shows how to do it with a rubber spatula?

Thanks,

Boulanger  

I’ve been working since September to produce my own “perfect” sourdough bread. Three weeks ago I was pretty much there, but you know, I keep tweaking, trying to make it more sour, and the recipe more reliable. Well, my tweak this time was changing flour. I’d been using KA Bread flour, but kept reading about people using KA All-Purpose flour and it was “just the same,” “worked just as well,” etc., etc. They never said it was just as good but different. . .

I had promised to bring two loaves to the Easter Dinner party we were invited to, so I took my starter out of the fridge Thursday night and started feeding it: quarter cup of bread flour, two tablespoons purified water, twice a day. This starter is happy, vigorous, bubbly, and I’ve come to understand that the fault lies with the baker in this house, not with the starter. It’s been very patient with me as I’ve struggled to learn.

This morning I started my bread, using about 1/2 cup of starter, along with some preferment, and adding those to 500 gm warm purified water. I added 750 gm flour (350 each of bread flour and AP flour, with 50 gm of rye flour) and 15 gm salt. It was very shaggy, much more than I remembered. Hm. Can’t be all that different, right? It’ll come along. I rolled it into a ball and put it into an oiled container in my rising area. Did hourly stretch-and-folds four times. The dough was so wet I ended up working on a floured surface, with floured hands.

I cut it in half, shaped it into two loaves and put them into my floured couche. An hour into the rise I started to preheat my oven to 500 degrees. And put my cast iron Dutch oven in there as well, hoping it would be my life saver. (It was. . .)

An hour and forty-five minutes of proofing and they were ready to go, but I could see that they were still soft and would not likely maintain their shape. The first loaf basically de-gassed as I rolled it onto the Silpat mat I use for baking. Bummer.  I poured the other loaf into the heated Dutch oven, sprayed it with water, and covered it. I dropped the temperature to 470 and baked them for thirty minutes. The loaf was done, but pale and misshapen.  I took the cover off the Dutch oven and gave it another ten minutes at 450. It was a glorious honeyed mahogany color, with a few surface bubbles and some shallow thin streaks of cracking (I’ll bet there’s a term for that that I don’t know. . . I never slashed the surface, but it did break open beautifully with these feathery trails.)

I’d love to say that the pictures are here, but the loaf traveled to our dinner party on the cooling rack in the back seat of the car. It was consumed in total with oohs and ahhs, enjoyed by all. I’ll do it again. WOW!  The flavor was full, nutty. Not “sour” enough, but probably sour to some.  The crumb was grayish (the rye, probably) beautiful, with smaller holes than I had hoped for but lots of them, and that lovely translucence that some bread gets.

So. . . questions and comments:  Did the change to 46.6% AP flour make the difference in wetness? If so, I will go back to 100% bread flour. Is the success of Dutch oven baking more reliable? (I was desperate that at least ONE of my loaves “work!” and the Dutch oven did it with dough I thought was a loss.) With dough that wet, how could I have increased the flour after the first stretch-and-fold with any reliability, to something that would have worked as loaves. . . ?

. . . and how do I make it more sour? I’ve been reluctant to go to the citric salt that I understand is used by many commercial bakers, but maybe it’s time. 

Thanks for any comments or suggestions – love hearing from the experts and hard-working wannabees on this site. It’s awesome!

Peggy