Cannot Get My Bread Dough to Form Gluten for Awesome Soft Bread
So I have bake bread like about 7 or 8 time. I mostly do white sandwich bread and once sourdough, by far the hardest to do from start without the starter going bad fast. While most turn out smelling good they were rather hard and not soft like the ones in store or the Japanese's milk bread. I be following the directions in the recipe book as it says. What I want to know is if there a standard procedure of order at which ingredients are added to insure proper formation of gluten. So far I know its add flour to water in stages for proper incorporation. Then the yeast. From there I get lost when to add the salt and the addition of oils such as butter as solid or liquid because these two ingredients can either allow or inhibit the formation gluten.
In a bowl I add 500g of flour and add 15g of butter and rubb it in the flour, than I add 1 tsp of sugar , 1 1/2tsp of Salt and 2tsp of yeast.
I give it all a good mix and than add 300ml * made of 100g boiling water and 200g of cold water * and add it to the mix.
I than bring it all together and knead it for about 12-15 minutes on my kitchen counter.
Is the butter solid or melted?
The butter is room temperature.
If you're making Japanese milk bread, search this site for Hokkaido Tangzhong. You need to make a cooked flour roux to add to the bread, and use intensive kneading. This will create really soft fluffy bread.
To form gluten you need either time + stretch and fold, or intensive kneading.
I use a stand mixer to work the dough. First is to make the water roux. Since you need to let it cool down, you can then mix the other ingredient. Mix all the dry in one bowl. Use instant yeast, just mix it right into the dry ingredients.First add the roux into the mixer, then the dry. Last will be the butter (fat). I first use the paddle to incorporate everything. Then use the dough hook for 7 minutes. Then go minute by minute or else you'll break the dough.
Store bought bread are so soft and light because they use either lard or vegetable oil. I haven't tried either since I prefer butter.
Good luck.
The issue you pose is whether it's important when to add what in making a dough. My answer after years of making doughs, sometimes failing and sometimes having great success, suggest that what's important is whether or not your leavening (here I mean yeast in any of its various forms, granular, cake or sourdough starter) is alive. Never allow yeast in any form to come into contact with temperatures that will kill it. Never let your yeast come into contact with salt in too concentrated a solution. Either or both of those situations will prevent the yeast from doing its business of making the dough rise and taste better. Thus I never worry about much else in terms of the order of adding ingredients. When to add other ingredients seems not to matter at all as long as you assure yourself that your yeast is and stays alive by not allowing it to get to hot (keep all ingredients no more than "warm", never "hot") and don't expect your yeast to stay alive if, for example, you try to proof it in warm water with your recipe's salt dissolve in it.