This is what I made for myself of all the things that I have learned so far.  I'm finding that there's a huge amount of information from various sources, all with spoon-fed amounts of usefulness.  So, here's my attempt to help others out there, whomever might actually find this.  Please note that my use of the word "yeast" means the brewer's instant yeast, and starter means the friendly creatures (or "the fish", as it is called in our home) that are cultivated from flour and water.  The numbered parts are all of the steps to actual bread making that I've found out.  I'm just now gleaning information about the preferment/poolish step (just learned a few weeks ago about the existence of such a step, and was relieved to find that "sponge" "poolish" "pate fermente" are all the same thing phew).  Here is basically what I've learned in the past four years:

EQUIPMENT    scale, oven peel/large spatula, unglazed quarry tiles or baking stone, measuring spoons/cups, bowls, wooden spoons, towels for bread, thin long stemmed thermometer to HIGH temperature

ABOUT STARTER

Not rigid method. Repeatedly successful recipes can fail.

Use variables to gain some control and predictability.

Variables include-- time, temperature, humidity, water quality, dough density/hydration

Use scientific method---only change one variable at a time

Starter bread characteristics:  large irregular holes, crumb, structure;  spreads, advantages (can make starter yourself, doesn't need extra food in the recipe, more room for creativity, ability to do more with texture and flavor, English Muffins, French bread), disadvantages (rise time less predictable, needs help to keep shape, needs to be tended and fed)

Starter eats flour, doesn’t eat sugar.  Any sugar in recipe you will end up eating yourself

Yeast bread characteristics—small crumb, regular small holes, less notable structure), tends to rise not spread, advantages (more predictable rise time, not need fed), disadvantages (cannot make yeast yourself, needs food added to recipe, flavor is entirely in the recipe--little creativity, has to be degassed)

MAKING STARTER

½ c whole grain flour with ¼ c water (equal weight).  Keep in glass or stainless steel with lid

Watch for life signs (bubbles) after 12 hours, if no signs for a few days, start over (check water quality)

Check the PH of your water---should be neutral or slightly acidic….basic is no good for starter. Add fruit juice or citric acid if needed

Feed when life signs, every 12 hours:  throw out ½ amount in there.  Put in exact same amount flour in there as in there already, plus ½ that in water (or equal weight of both)

*change container often*

Recommended stainless steel, glass, or glazed ceramic containers with lids (to keep bugs and children out, and moisture in)  starter reacts to most metals

After 3 days of consistent rising and falling, switch to white flour (to avoid bad critters)

Will smell like fish, should change to wheaty smell

After 1 week of consistent doubling, ok to use

Only use small amount of old starter to new starter (Tablespoon at most), keep discarding/baking—do not keep….ends up being a sponge not a starter

Note peak and fall times   starter:flour:water

Recommended 1:2:1 once a week feed fridge always, keeping Tablespoon amount or so

Once get good, can keep different teaspoon sized starters for each type of bread (CHEF)

More flavor=more time between feedings

1 PREPARE STARTER

Called preferment, sponge, poolish, bigas, levaine, pate fermentee (all the same)

Develops flavor, texture, lighter bigger air

More sour, more acid, longer shelf life

Note peak and fall times

Recommended 8-12 hours before dough mixing/kneading, 25% of total dough (so subtract from recipe flour and water used)

Add to bread at peak time

More starter % in bread, less proof time---acidity breaks down gluten

2 AUTOLYSE AND MIXING

Mix flour, water and poolish together, let rest five minutes or so (keeps from adding too much flour, and helps in kneading)

Most variable amounts are water and flour (coarse/fine ground flour, humidity, etc)

Set aside CHEF

Starter eats flour, doesn’t eat sugar.  Any sugar in recipe you will end up eating

oil--lending or not lending its flavor depends on recipe

Do NOT add salt directly to starter—mix in flour as a buffer first to keep starter alive

Do NOT use iodized salt—iodine becomes a gas in the oven—messes up your bread

3 KNEADING

-helps prevent too much flour being added--easier to add flour than water

-Palm push quarter turn only good for FLAT breads like pie crust, crackers

*Stretch&Fold:  adds air and builds structure—gluten sheath.  Also called French Kneading, or Slap Happy, etc.  Take the dough; slap the furthest side away from you down on the counter and away, while drawing the nearer side towards you.  Taking the nearer side in your palms (do not break, draw evenly like drafting wool) draw up and over further side, stretching sideways under and around, making a heart shape almost.  Make sure while you are drawing the dough over the further side to incorporate a nice big air bubble.  Turn the dough over and a quarter turn around (flip and turn like clockwise/counterclockwise).  Repeat.  Should change in feel and look—it will begin to pull dough off the counter and fingers.  Only dust the counter with flour if large pieces of dough are sticking—you want it to be tacky.  Shoot for 20 minutes of kneading. 

-Windowpane test—dough stretches between fingers fine enough to let light through without breaking

4 BULK FERMENTATION

Do not let ferment on pan---acidity tarnishes pans

Use oil to keep from sticking (using flour at this stage creates flour dumplings inside your bread)

Use heat during winter to help, especially in the North—direct heat ok at this step  70-90 degrees F optimal

Stretch and fold at least every thirty minutes to keep gluten structure from relaxing, and to distribute temperature evenly (fermentation heats up dough) S&F twice minimum during this stage

For smaller crumb, deflate while S&F

Bigger holes, keep as much air as possible

5 SHAPING AND PROOFING

This is the stage to choose your shape:  boule, baguette, loaf, braid, rolls, etc.  A shape doesn’t define a recipe, a recipe enhances the shape.  (good recipe, good rolls, etc)

Do not let proof on pan---acidity tarnishes pans

Starter spreads---need to use something to help.  Linen towels with flour method, proofing trays/counters, baskets heavily floured, etc.

use flour to keep from sticking--lightly

Do NOT use direct heat source (like oven light) to keep warm --creates a second crust that will not fill

Harder crust---use towel and let dry out to create a rind

Softer crust—let proof in moist environment (covered with bowl, etc)

More starter % in bread, less proof time---acidity breaks down gluten

Overproofing---when bread collapses---gluten stretched too far and cannot recover (make toast!)

Ready for oven:  when you poke it, it fills back your fingerprint but not all of the way

6 BAKING

Use flour on baking pan to keep bread from sticking (oil fries the bread and usually sticks)

Oven spring—put in already hot oven.  Oven high temp for 5 minutes, then lower temperature for optimal oven spring (example 450 degrees F, lower to 425 or 415)

Baking stone acts as heat sink to increase oven spring, can use unglazed quarry tiles---ALWAYS put into cold oven and let heat up and cool down with the oven (or break)

Slashing loaves a way to make the oven spring more predictable.  If bulges out near tray---temperature different in pan and air, etc.

Harder crust—spray dough with water right before putting in oven.  Do NOT steam oven directly if electronic---it will destroy oven entirely

Internal temperature 204 degrees F and above best indicator of doneness.  Cutting open stops the cool pressure cooker effect of the inside.  Thump test does NOT work.

If bread fell or didn’t bake well, make toast immediately

7 STORING

Sourdough:  Store in paper bag and bread cabinet if have one.  Fridge hastens going stale, Plastic keeps too much moisture

If bread contains milk products (milk, lots of butter or sourcream), or has a lot of moisture and sugar (cornbread or banana bread prime example of both), keep in fridge.  They only last about 2 days before going bad : (

Sourdough: make toast if going stale or out too long.  Bread should last for about 4 days, unless quick pour sugary breads like banana bread.

Hi all,

In selecting a kneading machine and electric oven for bread baking at home what will be the basic feature and performance I have to pay attention to?  Thanks in advance.

B.R.
satimis

Hello all, I'm new both to this site and to baking bread. I have so far made several attempts at a 100% whole wheat sandwich loaf, and yesterday I made 2/3 WW and 1/3 AP pitas using the recipe on this site. Every time I've made bread so far, the dough has been so sticky I can hardly handle it. When I try to knead it, it sticks to everything - the board, my hands, the rubber spatula I use to try to scrape it off. Whether I flour, oil, or wet my hands and work surface, the dough sticks - I have to re-apply the flour or whatever every second or third time I touch the dough. When I made my first loaf, I just kept dumping more flour on to try to reduce the stickiness, and I added so much that the resulting loaf was very dense and crumbly (although it tasted pretty good!). My dough seems more like a soft, gluey mass than the firm, elastic, cohesive stuff I see people working with in the YouTube kneading how-to's I've watched. So my question is, am I doing something wrong with kneading, proportions of ingredients, etc. or is this stickiness normal? If so, how the heck do you knead stuff like this?

First post from a long-time lurker -- apologies for the length.  I'm a regular baker, and I've baked some bread most weeks for the past decade or so.  I also dabble and experiment a lot.

Recently I've started wondering about why we actually knead/mix beyond just combining ingredients.  A friend who was asking me about the value of folding got me onto this question -- I started researching folding and ended up wondering what kneading/mixing actually does that can't be done as well (or better) by additional folding where necessary.  I'm not talking necessarily about the "no-knead" methods that have been in vogue for the past few years, which generally depend on a very long fermentation to develop gluten, though perhaps they also bear on this question.  I assume that for "standard" method breads, the initial knead/mix must be in part replaced by additional folding and perhaps modifications during shaping.

When I first started baking, I generally used the oft-touted "windowpane test" to know when I'd achieved adequate mixing/kneading.  A few years back I read things which have shown me that that isn't necessarily the best criteria.  Hamelman is one source that gives some detail:

Appropriate development does not necessarily mean full gluten development....  If our only goal is dough volume, a lot of yeast and maximum gluten development in the mixer is the method of choice.  Maximum volume is one thing, however, and maximum flavor another, and a mixing technique that favors utmost volume will also compromise flavor. [p. 8, emphasis in original]

Hamelman goes on to point out that mixing incorporates oxygen, which is important for gluten development, but he points out that too much oxygen ruins flavor by destroying carotenoids.  Elsewhere, he also notes that the oxygen incorporated during mixing is consumed within minutes by the yeast (p. 13); I'm not sure whether that has any impact on the ongoing gluten development, though.

He then contrasts heavy mixing with very light mixing, describing the latter thus:

[I]magine that the dough is mixed very slowly, on low speed only.... Gluten development is at a minimum, as is the oxidation of the dough.  Bulk fermentation lasts for many hours, punctuated by a number of folds, and the dough slowly reaches maturity. The carotenoids are not oxidized out of the dough, and the bread flavor is superb.  Loaf volume, however, is comparatively small, because of the relative lack of physical dough development. [pp. 8-9]

In the end, Hamelman argues for a middle course, which develops dough strength but doesn't destroy flavor.  Most books seem to agree, and many even say that, short of overmixing in a professional mixer, you're unlikely to overdevelop the dough in an initial mix.  But in the description I've quoted here, it seems that the effects of little kneading are mixed (pardon the pun) -- the dough requires more tending (folding, and a longer fermentation), but the flavor is greater.

Yet I wonder about his conclusion that the loaf volume is necessarily "comparatively small."  In my experience (which is not that of a professional baker), it seems that proper shaping and added folding (if necessary) contribute a lot more to final loaf volume than extensive mixing or a long initial knead.

In fact, I've taken to running experiments in the past few months, making a lot of familiar recipes, but skipping the mixing/kneading beyond getting the ingredients moist and well-mixed.  I add in a couple extra folds during bulk fermentation as necessary to achieve the kind of dough strength I want.

And, in the end, I don't feel like loaf volume is smaller.  If anything, it seems to be slightly larger than I've generally had.  I haven't gotten around to side-by-side comparisons yet, though in any case, if some of my loaf volumes are smaller, the difference is not very significant.  I haven't noticed a difference in flavor, though it certainly isn't worse. 

But it seems to me that the only real trade-off is maintenance.  In the traditional baking routine with up-front mixing and kneading, I spend 5-10 minutes doing serious initial mixing.  In the "no-knead" (or perhaps "minimal knead") case, I'm forced to tend to the dough for a couple minutes for every 45 minutes or even more often during bulk fermentation.  While that additional maintenance can be bothersome, I'm generally already tied down for one or two folds anyway, and if I do an autolyze, that extends my initial time commitment as well.

So, in sum, I guess I have two questions:

(1) Is there something I'm missing here?  Is there a major advantage to enhanced initial mixing, either something you've read about theoretically or something you've observed in your own baking?

(2) If the advantages aren't that significant, why is the standard method found in the vast majority of books so focused on a long initial knead/mix?

I have begun to experiment with grains other than wheat.  I use a Bosch machine, and knead whole wheat bread for 10 minutes with excellent results.

Does anyone know about kneading time for a bread 50% kamut and 50% spelt? 

To try to document dough development of a lean dough, I created a video of mixing some lean, 59% hydration dough in my KitchenAid 5qt mixer at speed #2 (the 2nd click). 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBZFYzeK1Vo

I'm trying to get a better idea of knead times for my mixer with respect to different doughs. Hamelman in "Bread" says 6.5 - 7.5 minutes for moderate gluten development for KAid stand mixer. He recommends 900-1000 total revolutions for moderate dough development, so with some info from fthec and KAid:

#1 (stir): 40 rpm 
#2: 54 rpm 
#3: 79 rpm 
#4: 104 rpm 

 This means:

Time (minutes)	Revolutions
0	0
1	54
2	108
3	162
4	216
5	270
6	324
7	378
8	432
9	486
10	540
11	594
12	648
13	702
14	756
15	810
16	864
17	918
18	972
19	1026
20	1080

According to the stats, I may still have kneaded for too short of a time (H. also says that doughs with hydration under 60% will take longer to develop, as will doughs that have high hydration). It really started smoothing out at about 8 minutes, even more substantially at ~13 minutes. I guess next time I'll have to push it further, and see what happens. 

So I have been baking all my life, but have never ventured into the land of bread (other than sweet breads, doughnuts etc.) and yesterday I decided to make the plunge and bake my first loaf of white bread.

My recipe made enough dough for two loaves, so I baked one loaf and put the rest of the dough into the fridge so I could make it today (after I had tried my first loaf). My first loaf was tasty and gorgeous but sadly super dense, which was okay for a first try but not perfect by any means.

I was able to determine that my mistake was not kneading enough but now am not sure what to do about my second loaf. The second loaf which is in the fridge has already risen, so I'm not sure if I can bring it up to room temperature and re-knead it or if that will ruin the bread. Can someone give me any insight into what I should do?

Should i bring the second batch up to temperature, re-knead and let it re-rise? Should I just call it a day and make another dense loaf of bread and remember to knead more the next time?

Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!

I wanted to create a searchable link to the Illustration provided by long time contributor and all around good guy, Mebake (Khalid). Khalid has taken pen to paper and shown us how to accomplish the procedure of developing gluten and strength in higher hydration dough. His Illustration is very clear and easy to understand. Personally, I use this method nearly every time I bake and find it a valuable tool that doesn't make a mess in the kitchen and has little physical impact, unlike conventional kneading.

Here is the direct link to the Illustration. You can find it under the "Manual" heading at the top of the main page and then by following the Section II, Bread Basics, Process and Techniques, then finally Mixing and Dough Development. scroll down to the Stretching and Folding Illustrated.

Than you Khalid for this most helpful addition to the Handbook.

Eric

Now here is a fun way to make noodles :)   

This young man does it beautifully.

http://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/8-Mesmerizing-Food-Videos/2

anna