The Poke Test – Give that ball of dough a firm poke with your finger. If the indentation fills back quickly, you're good to go. If it stays looking like a deep dimple, continue kneading.
If the dough doesn't spring back when pressed with a finger, or tears when you pull it, it needs more kneading. If it springs back immediately when lightly pressed, and doesn't tear when you pull it, it's been kneaded enough and is ready to rise.
If you peter out and don't knead your dough enough by hand, or if you don't allow it enough time in your mixer, the dough will lack strength. It is a tell-tale sign of not enough kneading if your bread dough cannot hold its shape or acts listless and fails to inflate. Instead of rising, the dough will spread out flat.
A guide to kneading times
Kneading with a KitchenAid mixer for 2 minutes is equivalent to kneading 10-12 minutes by hand. KitchenAid does not recommend kneading bread dough for more than 2 minutes at Speed 2, and that the total mixing and kneading time does not exceed 4-6 minutes.
If you're worried that you've left it to ferment too long — say, your sourdough has been in the fridge for three days — do the windowpane test just before shaping. If it doesn't pass, your best bet is to make flatbread!
Upon first mixing, your dough will look like a lumpy mess of flours. As you knead it, it will gradually smooth out. By the time your dough is fully kneaded, it should be smooth and tacky to touch.
Smooth Dough – The dough will start out looking like a shaggy, lumpy mass and will gradually smooth out as you knead. By the time you finish, it should be completely smooth and slightly tacky to the touch. 2. Holds Its Shape – Lift the ball of dough in your hand and hold it in the air for a second.
These gases get trapped inside the dough buy the mesh the gluten makes. This is what causes your bread to be airy and fluffy. This mesh is formed by kneading the dough. If you do not knead a dough enough you do not give your bread a chance as the gluten did not have enough time to build that mesh.
Autolyse is fancy word invented by a French baking instructor and bread scientist of sorts, Raymond Calvel. It means to let your dough rest (I give it 25-30 minutes) before kneading.
Manipulating them for 10 to 15 minutes usually didn't affect the results. Firm doughs do benefit from a few minutes of kneading, but only because it helps mix the flour evenly with the smaller proportion of water. Prolonged kneading didn't make much difference in the finished loaves.
Dense or heavy bread can be the result of not kneading the dough mix properly –out of many reasons out there. Some of the other potential reasons could be mixing the yeast & salt together or losing your patience while baking or even not creating enough tension in the finished loaf before baking the bread.
The structure of gluten plays a massive part in how your bread is formed and the gas production it creates is what develops the air pockets in bread, allowing it to rise. If your dough is not kneaded enough, the right amount of gas will not be released and it will result in a very dense bread with little moisture.
Embrace the stickiness
Bread dough should be sticky and wet when you begin kneading it. I encourage everyone in my classes to embrace the stickiness! When water is first added to flour, the flour takes a while to fully absorb it all, making that dough even more sticky.
Under-kneaded dough doesn't spring up as much in the oven, resulting in a flat-looking loaf with a dense texture. It may also tear when you try to cut slices.
What causes sticky sourdough or bread dough? Overly sticky dough is normally caused by a combination of using the wrong flour and using too much water.
The Dough Passes the Windowpane Test
To do this, tear off a chunk of dough and stretch it between your fingers. If the dough tears, you haven't developed enough gluten and it needs more kneading. If it stretches without breaking, making a windowpane of sorts, you're done and you can let the dough rest.
Knead it two to three times before forming your desired shape or placing it into a bread pan.
Yes. After the first rise, you can knead the dough lightly to remove some gas that causes air bubbles. This step is ideal if you want your dough to be flat and dense or if you want bread with a close crumb, like sourdough.
Dense or heavy bread can be caused by not kneading the dough enough, not letting the dough rise enough, or using too much flour. To fix this issue: try kneading the dough for longer or allowing it to rise for a longer period. You can also try adding a little more liquid to the dough or using a higher protein flour.
Store airtight with the two cut halves facing each other and pressed together. Wrapping bread to retain moisture keeps it soft, though it robs crusty artisan bread of its crispy crust. Wrapping in plastic (or foil) rather than cloth keeps bread soft longer.
Over-kneading has a tendency to result in chewy bread. Here's how to tell if you've kneaded enough. Another possibility—you used bread flour when all-purpose flour would do. If a recipe with bread flour turned out chewier than you like, try it with all-purpose and knead only as much as the recipe directs.
As a guide, for a kitchen where the temperature is 20C and you added yeast at 1% of the flour weight (eg 5g dried yeast in 500g flour), you should still leave your dough to rise for around an hour and a half to two hours after kneading it.
Resting the dough gives the gluten structure a chance to loosen and unwind, and it will give you a better final product.