Though it's important to knead your dough thoroughly, it's not necessary to knead your dough for long. We recommended kneading your dough for about 4 to 6 minutes! Over-kneading your dough will create a fine, crumb-like texture, giving your dough a bready texture rather than a light and airy pizza crust.
Your dough will be shaggy and lumpy to begin with, but once you've kneaded it for a while it should be smooth and slightly tacky to touch. If your dough holds it shape and doesn't ooze or sag when you hold it up, that's another good sign that your dough is well kneaded.
After the dough has rested, turn it out onto a very lightly floured work surface and knead it by hand about 20-30 times. (If your dough has the perfect consistency, you don't even need to flour the surface.)
If your dough feels dense and tough to handle when you stop the mixer, it is a sign that it is becoming over-kneaded. Over-kneaded dough can become very hard to work with and produce a more flat and chewy bread.
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.
Loaves made with over-kneaded dough often end up with a rock-hard crust and a dense, dry interior. Slices will be very crumbly, especially toward the middle.
The first thing you will notice when you over knead a dough is that it will feel very dense and stiff. It will be hard to press the dough down and flatten it on the counter. It will also be hard to knead by hand and resist being re shaped. The dough will likely rip easily rather than stretch when pulled.
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.
The longer you knead the dough, the less sticky it will become. Strangely, if you do not rehydrate your yeast correctly this can also result in a sticky dough. Active dry yeast needs to be rehydrated with warm water to activate it correctly and cause it to bloom.
Flour: Strong bread flour: A higher proportion of protein and a stronger flour to allow for more gluten development. This means your dough is less likely to tear when shaping and you'll end up with a more crisp crust. Better gluten development means more air pockets, which means an airy crust.
If your pizza dough is quickly snapping back or difficult to stretch, your dough is too tight. Cover your dough with plastic wrap and let it sit for 10-15 minutes. After a bit of rest, the gluten in the dough will relax, making the process of stretching much easier.
Sometimes when too much flour is added, dough will come out hard and stiff. This can be caused by overworking the dough either by hand or with a roller. Overworking dough will pop all the tiny bubbles that make pizza crust so airy and fluffy once cooked. The hard crust can also be caused by the type of flour you use.
Pizza dough should proof in room temperature anywhere from 1 to 24-hours or even more. While cold-proofing a pizza dough can take anywhere from 24 to 72 hours.
If the dough is under proofed, the indentation springs back really fast and does not stay. If the dough is over proofed, the indentation stays, the surface is sticky, and the structure may collapse.
2 – Kneading Your Dough for Long Enough
Keading your bread for long enough is also key to producing soft and well-risen bread every time.
Though it's important to knead your dough thoroughly, it's not necessary to knead your dough for long. We recommended kneading your dough for about 4 to 6 minutes! Over-kneading your dough will create a fine, crumb-like texture, giving your dough a bready texture rather than a light and airy pizza crust.
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.
Most recipes call for the bread to double in size – this can take one to three hours, depending on the temperature, moisture in the dough, the development of the gluten, and the ingredients used.
There's something magical about the bread you get at your local bakeries - they're always sooo soft and fluffy. Many of these breads, especially packaged ones, are made with a ton of chemical additives such as calcium propionate, amylase, and chlorine dioxide which help keep them soft, light, and fluffy for days.
Knowing When To Stop Kneading. Kneading for 10-12 minutes by hand or 8-10 minutes in a mixer are the general standards; if you've been massaging the dough for that length of time, you can be pretty confident that you've done your job.
Yeast is too hot Yeast may have been dissolved in water that was too hot, or the liquid ingredients in the recipe may be too hot, causing the yeast to die. Yeast needs to be warm - not too hot, not too cold. Yeast is too cold If the other ingredients are too cold, it could cause some of the yeast to die.
If your dough is tearing when you stretch it out, this usually means that there's not enough gluten in your dough. Pizza dough needs flour with a high protein content in order to develop gluten. Most styles of pizza call for 00 flour or strong white bread flour.