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Am I the only one who used to knead for 20 minutes and now just waits 4 hours instead
Back in 2016 my old roommate in Austin watched me knead dough for 25 straight minutes and said his grandma never touched hers after the first mix, and after 3 tries I realized a long rest in the bowl beats sore arms every single time, so what made you finally stop kneading so much?
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jesse_craig224h ago
Long rests are great until you want bread on a Tuesday night and not Wednesday morning. I worked in a bakery for two years and we still mixed dough to full windowpane because a 4 hour autolyse does nothing if your flour is weak or your hydration is off. Try a wet dough at 80 percent hydration with just a rest and tell me how that turns out, you will get a puddle, not a loaf. Kneading builds strength you can feel, and some doughs need that work before they ever see a bowl in the fridge. Your roommate's grandma probably made sandwich bread with cheap flour, which is a totally different game than a high hydration sourdough.
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jamiekim4h ago
The windowpane thing is real but you dont actually need to knead to get there. I do 80 percent hydration all the time with just stretch and folds every 30 min and it holds up fine, no puddle. Yeah if you dump wet flour in a bowl and walk away for 4 hours thats gonna be soup, but slap and folds build plenty of strength without kneading. The flour matters way more than the method honestly, weak flour is gonna fight you no matter how much you work it. I think the bakery thing is fair but commercial mixers do a lot of that work for you, doing it by hand at home is a different deal.
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