Hand kneading high hydration % doughs
Today I did my first high hydration % dough, as I made Peter Reinhard's pain ancienne. This is about 80% water to flour... He says you are better off using a stand mixer, and kind of leaves it at that aside from the same explanation for kneading dough that he gives for the regular French bread. This dough however was a totally different animal! Weighing it out carefully, it hardly resembled the 70% French bread I've made several times... Very sticky and pretty much UN knead able. I just did my best for about 6 minutes by flouring my hands constantly, then threw it in the fridge. Am I doing it wrong or is the gluten going to develop itself through autolysis or something? I love rustic breads with large crumb so I can see myself running into this problem frequently... And I do have a stand mixer its just 8000 miles away, so I'm not going to buy another one.