What should bread dough feel like

If we added salt to our autolyse, it would compete with our proteins and starches for water, causing them to take longer to hydrate. While this wouldn't be a disaster, we've already committed ourselves to a five-hour project here, so why make it harder on ourselves? And as for the yeast, its job is to ferment our flour, causing the bread to rise and develop flavor. But on a chemical level, mixing—and autolysing, in particular—isn't about flavor.

It's about structure. Were we to put our yeast in during our autolyse, it would start belching out gas. When we begin our kneading steps later, we would just end up pounding this gas back out. In short, the yeast just doesn't have a job to do during the autolyse. To make things easier to follow, I'm first going to explain how to accomplish this in a mixer, and then explain the quirks and tricks of doing it by hand. If kneading with a stand-mixer, add the salt and yeast to your autolysing dough, and then set it to a nice, slow speed until you can't feel any graininess in the dough—just a few minutes should do it.

If you're using active yeast, and have bloomed it, the water it's bloomed in goes in, too. Beware: some of the water might splash out and hit you in the face if you stand over it being nosy.

Should this happen, estimate back in the amount of water you think was lost—likely no more than a tablespoon or two. Once everything is incorporated, we now have what's called a complete dough, meaning we have flour, water, salt, and yeast all getting busy with each other. It's time to develop our gluten. This means we're going to organize our gluten into a coherent, three-dimensional structure. Here we are taking our threads and ropes, and weaving them into a gas-trapping net.

To develop gluten, set your mixer to medium high speed, and let it go for a few minutes. It's important not to set your mixer speed too high, or the gluten structure will start to rip, keeping our loaves from rising to their full potential and making a denser bread than we want to eat. This is bread baking, not a mosh pit—we're aiming to discipline our gluten here, not raise havoc. When the dough just starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl, it's time to stop.

Give it a tug. It should stick to you just a bit, but be able to give you a gentle, decisive handshake. You should see the dough curling around the hook a little, and if you get in close, the curls should look almost like little muscles, like this:.

Using a dough spatula, transfer your dough into a lightly oiled bowl large enough to let the dough at least double in volume. The oil will keep our dough from sticking to the bowl, and allow it to rise unhindered. Be sure to cut the dough out of the bowl in pieces, or scrape the whole mass out at once. Try not to tug and rip it out of the bowl, which will tear the gluten we've just developed and make our dough stickier. If kneading by hand If working by hand, do yourself a favor and get your oiled container—the one that the dough is going to proof in—ready to go right next to you.

We're about to get really messy again. Start by sprinkling your salt and yeast evenly over the top of your dough. With a dough spatula and your hand, begin folding the dough over itself to incorporate, giving a quarter turn of the dough between each fold. As you do this, you will feel the dough begin to tighten, and what once was a loose mess will begin to look and feel orderly.

Keep working the dough until you don't feel any salt or yeast granules left. If you used active dry yeast and are also incorporating the last of your water, make sure that the water is fully incorporated, too, and that there is no residual slipperiness or pooling around the sides and creases.

By now, chances are that you've already worked the dough as much as, if not more than, the folks using a mixer. If your dough still feels slack, don't worry—we can always add in an extra fold during proofing, which will be discussed in our next post.

Double chances are that your hands are caked in dough. Aren't you glad that your oiled bowl is waiting right next to you? With your dough spatula, scrape your dough into your bowl, getting as much off your hands as you can, and then go clean up your sloppy self. But wait a minute—when do we do that whole kneading thing? We've already done it. If you used a stand mixer, you kneaded your dough when you turned your mixer to that medium-fast speed.

If you mixed by hand, then the work you did to incorporate your flour and salt—along with our autolyse—got you most of the way there. The purpose of kneading any dough is to develop gluten, and incorporate micro bubbles into the mass of the dough which will inflate during proofing and baking. The more a dough is kneaded, the tighter and more regular a baked loaf's crumb will become. Sandwich breads are kneaded more. Really wet doughs, like a rustic French miche , are hardly kneaded at all.

For a medium-wet dough like the workhorse loaf , we knead enough to bring our dough together into something shapeable, but not so much that we lose our regularly-irregular crumb hat tip to Chef Brynne Thomas for that coinage.

At the French Culinary Institute, we called this middle-of-road sort of mix an improved mix. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and get your station clean. And with that, it's time for our first rise, or bulk fermentation. Stay tuned for our next installment, which will cover what happens during fermentation, and how to shape a boule. Both books go into much more detail than we did here, and are my guiding light for bread chemistry. Happy baking everyone.

And keep the questions coming. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile.

Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Pin Share Email. Simple Crusty White Bread Recipe. Featured Video. Read More. More Serious Eats Recipes. Just after increasing the mixer speed to medium-low, the dough will lack form and will stick to the sides of the bowl.

After 4 minutes, the dough will still be tacky, but it will start to pull away from the sides of the bowl and look more uniform. After 8 minutes, the dough will pull away from the sides of the bowl and have a compact form.

After mixing the ingredients, transfer the shaggy dough to a lightly floured counter and shape it into a rough ball. Start each stroke by gently pressing the dough down and away from you with the heel of your hand. Lightly sprinkle the dough with flour as needed to coax the dough into a smooth mass. After about 4 minutes, the dough should look smooth. Press the dough forward again. After about 8 minutes it should begin to turn smooth and elastic. Repeat folding and pressing until the dough is smooth and elastic and forms a ball.

This should take 15 to 25 minutes. Does the dough clear the sides of the bowl? If not, keep going. The dough on the left see photo below is still sticking slightly. The dough on the right see photo below clears the sides of the bowl.

Is the dough elastic? The dough on the right can be pulled like a rubber band without snapping and springing back into place. The dough on the left lacks elasticity and breaks when pulled, signaling that the gluten proteins have not yet cross-linked into a strong network. Sticky dough can be difficult to work with and may require the addition of a small amount of flour to tighten up.

Most doughs require the addition of more flour if they fail to clear the sides of the bowl in their kneading time. To ensure you get the proper dough consistency and bread texture, mix in additional flour slowly, 1 tablespoon at a time.

Proper kneading is essential for developing gluten in doughs, but there can be too much of a good thing. Overkneading causes the dough to become warm and to turn from a wheaty tan color to a dull white, producing baked loaves with a sickly pallor and expired flavors. Once your dough clears the sides of the bowl and feels smooth and elastic, stop kneading.

For many bread recipes we would caution against the rough treatment of a food processor , which can tear apart the strands of gluten that give bread structure and the ability to rise. But for pizzas, flatbreads, and other doughs where we want chew but the structure is less important, we like to put it to use.

When gluten has been adequately developed for bread dough, the dough will take on several characteristics. A well kneaded dough will be stretchy, elastic, and bounce back when poked. Overworked dough can happen when using a stand mixer. When we mix our ingredients together, some serious science starts to happen. The yeast begins eating the starch sugars in the flour and releasing those sugars in the form of carbon dioxide. Proofing is the process that allows the build-up of carbon dioxide into the dough, expanded the loaf as its bakes.

A cold temperature will slow the reaction and a temperature that is too hot will begin the cooking process and kill the yeast. The dough should feel soft and pillowy.

Before we pop that bread in the oven, give it a score across the top. This is done by using a few slits of the knife on the very top of the dough, which allows the build-up of carbon dioxide from the yeast to release properly when baking. A fully baked loaf will sound hollow to the tap.