A dough hook is the best tool you can use to knead dough. It does everything your hands would do, but more quickly. Not only does a stand mixer and dough hook do all the work—but you're more likely to get better results if you use them instead.
The C-shaped hook kneads by pushing the ball of dough against the sides of the mixing bowl while a spiral-shaped hook kneads by pushing dough off the bottom of the bowl. The instructions below can help you use a stand mixer dough hook accessory, so you can take your dough-making skills to a new level.
A dough hook is a curved, hook-shaped attachment specifically made for kneading dough. It helps gluten strands develop quickly, making for easy and thorough kneading with quick clean up.
The dough hook should be used for all yeast breads. Speed 2 is the only speed that should be used. If you use a higher speed, it is harder on your mixer motor, and if you use a lower speed, it will not provide enough momentum to knead properly.
The dough hook takes the elbow grease out of pizza dough, pasta dough, and all kinds of yeasted breads—if it's something you plan to stretch and shape in any way, you can probably use a dough hook for it.
So while hand kneading can be a gratifying process, we recommend using a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment for this task. A dough hook is the best tool you can use to knead dough. It does everything your hands would do, but more quickly.
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.
Turn your mixer on low speed. Allow it to knead the dough for 3 minutes, or until it clings to the hook and cleans the sides of the bowl. Continue to knead the dough 3-4 minutes longer. You'll know your dough is kneaded enough when it feels smooth and elastic.
Kneading with a KitchenAid® mixer for 2 minutes is equivalent to kneading 10 - 12 minutes by hand.
Stand Mixer: Advantages
Stand mixers are also able to handle sticky doughs, which have a high water content. If you try to knead wet doughs by hand, they are likely to cling to your fingers. A mixer also has the ability to knead very heavy doughs that would strain your hands if you tried to knead them yourself.
Can a food processor or mixer replace kneading by hand? Using a machine to do your kneading changes the final product. While a food processor or a stand mixture does a fine job of developing the gluten in dough, neither one of them perfectly mimics the motion of hand-kneading.
How long do you knead bread dough in a stand mixer? If using a KitchenAid® model, mix bread dough in a stand mixer for no more than 2 minutes, then knead for 2-4 minutes more depending on the recipe. You'll need to adapt the hand-kneading time in your favorite recipes so you don't over-knead.
Instead, the range of which a dough can be properly kneaded is quite broad. It's possible to under-knead the mixture by a small amount, or over-knead it and still yield a delicious loaf of bread. Doughs usually flop when they are severely under or over-kneaded. That being said, it is quite easy to over-knead dough.
Under Kneading
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. The dough may even fall back onto itself and collapse as the gases produced by the yeast escapes.
The dough hook is the best tool for kneading doughs, like breads, pizza dough, and pasta dough. The dough hook takes the place of hand kneading, but it does it much faster. Speed 2 gives the best results for kneading, and the mixer can knead most yeast doughs within 5 minutes.
No-knead bread is a method of bread baking that uses a very long fermentation (rising) time instead of kneading to form the gluten strands that give the bread its texture. It is characterized by a low yeast content and a very wet dough.
As the name suggests, dough hook attachments are best for kneading together bread doughs and pizza doughs, but they can also be used to mix pasta dough. While this tool is not as versatile as the flat beater attachment, it drastically reduces time and effort spent kneading dough.
It is important to use only Speed 2, never higher or lower, when kneading yeast dough. If you knead too long, the dough will start to climb up the "c" shaped dough hook. The dough should form a ball and clean the sides of the bowl.
Bread dough that isn't smooth may require more kneading or a better tensioning technique, or it might be lacking in protein.
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.
Overkneaded dough will be tough and make tough, chewy bread. If you've kneaded by hand, you don't need to be too worried about overworked dough—you'll start to notice it getting difficult to manage. It takes a lot of elbow grease to knead bread dough; you'll likely tire yourself out before you can over-knead.
Over kneaded dough can't be fixed and will result in a rock-hard loaf, so be careful with this mistake.
Stretch a section of dough between your fingers. If the dough tears, it needs to be kneaded more. If it stretches without tearing (making a windowpane of sorts), your dough is ready. Once you've determined that your dough has been kneaded enough, it's time to allow it to rest.