Novice bakers are concerned with the question: is it possible to knead the dough efficiently by hand or is it better to purchase a dough kneader or mixer?

To answer this question, I suggest turning to experienced bakers

Recently I came across the opinion that hand-kneaded bread is a special bread that differs from mechanically kneaded bread, and in order to bake bread from hand-kneaded dough, you need a special suitable recipe... In other words, bread recipes where the dough should be kneaded not warm hands with love and patience, but with soulless bread makers and mixers is absolutely not suitable! It is not suitable for those who do not have the appropriate devices in the kitchen or, for ideological reasons, do not want to use them, they say, the dough loves the hands, not the hooks... In general, there is, of course, some truth in this, but in most cases it is not decisive values ​​| Bread that is kneaded in a mixer or HP can almost always be baked without resorting to the help of equipment and kneading the dough by hand, spending some time and effort | Which one depends on the method you choose...

There is also an opinion that hand-kneaded bread recipes require virtually no kneading. In search of these wonderful recipes, novice bakers are horrified by the admission that “I kneaded this dough with my hands for 40 minutes!”, and think that they certainly do not have the time, energy and desire to tinker with the dough for as long. I don’t know, I won’t say about everyone, but I was like that myself, I was afraid and didn’t want to knead the dough with my hands - exactly until I tried it one day and saw with my own eyes how it changes and what it is capable of. And I assure you: this is a completely magical, meditative, interesting, educational and creative process, when you suddenly understand that it’s simply impossible to tear yourself away, that “just a little more and, probably, it’ll be enough,” has already flashed through your head twenty times, and fatigue It’s so pleasant in your hands, and the dough underneath is so silky, it’s pure delight!

And right away I want to make a statement)) In fact, nothing new, as always - the obvious: any bread dough must be well kneaded, gluten must be developed in it, otherwise you won’t get good bread, so you won’t be able to cheat. If you simply mix flour and water until smooth, let it ferment for a couple of hours and bake, you will end up with unsatisfactory bread. It will float during proofing and baking and crumble during slicing; in addition, the porosity of such bread will be very “smeared” on the cut, and will also affect the taste. And it doesn’t matter who under-mixed: the baker with his hands or the machine with a hook, the result will be the same. Undermixing is noticeable in wet dough. For example, if the ciabatta dough is poorly kneaded, it will be impossible to work with it at all. In addition to the fact that it will be incredibly sticky, it will spread into a flat cake during proofing, and instead of large, beautiful porosity, under the crust there will be a cluster of rough, torn pores with thick walls, and the ciabatta itself will resemble a rough sole.

How can you determine whether it’s enough to knead or whether you need to sweat more? In fact, this can be understood directly by the appearance and properties of the dough, by literally feeling it with your hands and looking at it with your eyes. The kneaded dough is of medium consistency, not very thick and not very wet (60-65% humidity), soft and pleasant to the touch, non-sticky, elastic, elastic, and, if rolled into a ball, does not tear. All these properties of the dough are provided by developed gluten, which can stretch. Please note that the same dough at the beginning and at the end of kneading looks very different and has different properties. At the beginning of the kneading, it is very sticky, sticks everywhere, stains everything and leaves marks, at the same time it does not stretch well, and if you fold it into a ball, it immediately breaks.

At the beginning of kneading, the gluten of the dough is still very poorly developed, the flour and water have just mixed, their molecules have just joined, the flour protein has not yet had time to swell enough and form a “frame” of elastic threads and films. If we go back a step and look at this mass before kneading, this is what we will see: before it was combined with water, the flour was just a collection of tiny particles, which, of course, contained gluten, but its molecules were chaotically scattered in the flour powder.

As soon as they touched the water, the process of gluten development began, and we can actively participate in it!

How to do it.

1) Autolysis. The first thing to do with flour and water for bread dough is just mix them and forget about half an hour. Many people neglect this stage, but, in fact, autolysis is a great miracle and its importance is difficult to overestimate, especially if the dough is kneaded by hand. This can be called passive kneading: flour and water are roughly mixed to form a lumpy mass, and left for a while to hydrate the flour and its whites to swell.

Usually all the flour and water required by the recipe are used; if the dough is sourdough, then the leaven should also participate in autolysis. First, the starter (sourdough dough) dissolves in water, for which it is very convenient to use a blender, mixer or food processor. Then the water is mixed with flour. In this case, the sourdough acid will help the gluten proteins to swell even better and faster, and, accordingly, the gluten will develop faster during kneading. For example, test WITHOUT LEADING It’s better to “rest” for at least an hour so that the whites swell, but the dough WITH SOURDOUND 20-30 minutes will be enough, after which you can add all other ingredients to the dough, such as salt, sugar, honey, butter, etc.
This is basically the method behind the legendary no-knead bread, where bread dough, including yeast (sourdough) and salt, is mixed and left overnight. Overnight, the gluten of the dough develops on its own simply under the influence of internal processes, without any participation from the baker.

There is another lazy way to knead bread dough, when you practically don’t need to puff and work with your hands - fold it multiple times. With this method, there is practically no need to knead, just periodically approach the dough and carefully make an envelope out of it. This method is described perfectly in this recipe by English baker Dan Lepard. The dough is not kneaded at all, it is folded into an envelope at the very beginning, then three similar approaches with an interval of 10 minutes, then two with a 30-minute interval and several more folds with an interval of 1-2 hours. The only negative (albeit very relative) is that you can’t really move away from the dough, but, on the other hand, this is a great way to learn such lazy kneading and clearly see how the dough changes and how it is affected by “these strange foldings, for what, I wonder , they are generally needed.” Here, for example, is the story of one test in pictures.

By the way, about folding. It is known that it has always been customary for us to knead the dough, crumple it, deflate it, knock out bubbles, sometimes without even rolling it into a ball. But Europeans are characterized by precisely this “folding”, careful, neat, so as not to disturb the structure of the dough and preserve bubbles. This is a very simple operation: the dough is laid out on a work surface dusted with flour or greased with oil and stretched into a rectangular layer. Then one side, the one that is closer to itself, is slightly stretched towards itself and transferred to the middle. The same with the opposite side, only it is stretched away from itself, and transferred, again, to the middle, overlapping. The same goes for the sides: the left one is stretched to the left and placed towards the center, the right one is stretched to the right and overlapped towards the center.

The result is a dense envelope, which can be placed in this form in a bowl to ferment, or you can also roll it up to form an elastic ball. During these manipulations with the dough, two important things happen: firstly, gluten develops and strengthens, and secondly, air is captured, which has a good effect on both fermentation and gluten.

Apart from the lazy ones, there are several active ways to knead bread dough. And if before that it went through the stage of autolysis with the starter, then further kneading will take only 10-15 minutes of hand work. I'll show you three.

1) First method- the most famous and popular, when the dough is constantly folded inward, stretched under the pressure of the palms, pressed into the table and folded inward again, and so on in a circle. It seems to me that we are already born with this knowledge - how to knead dough, or more precisely, how to knead the dough exactly this way, because this is how both children and adults knead it, who have never done anything like this in their lives before. For me, an important indicator of the degree of gluten development is the moment when it becomes convenient to work with the dough on weight, and not on the table or in a bowl (if there is not a lot of dough)).

Provided that the dough has passed the autolysis stage at the beginning, kneading will take about 15-20 minutes.

2) The second method is beating. It is good because it allows you not only to effectively knead the dough in a short time, but also to “let off steam” without standing in the corner of the boxing ring, if there is a need for it. The dough is taken with both hands, rises up and hits the table with all its strength. There is a loud BDSHSHSHCH!!! At this moment, you need to quickly roll the edge of the dough away from you or towards you, so that you get almost a bun, and again give it a good smack, and so on until you have a perfectly smooth, beautiful dough in your hands.

3) The third method is washing. It's really similar to how you wash clothes by hand, the dough is simply rubbed together as if it were being washed. You can rub it on the table, you can use both hands against each other, periodically cleaning the table with a scraper. This method is energetic and quite fast; in just 10 minutes the dough will reach its condition. Unfortunately, I was not able to film this process; it requires both hands :) But the principle, I think, is clear.

At the same time, I would like to note that dough of different consistency will behave differently. For example, wet soft dough with well-developed gluten (for baguettes and ciabatta) will stretch into thin films, and when folded, large thin-walled bubbles will appear at the folds. Dough with a stiff consistency will not be able to do anything like this, but thin transparent, almost flat bubbles will be visible on its surface, it will be soft, smooth, like a polished cobblestone, and easily curl into a ball, without tears. Once, trying to figure out when my dough would reach its standard, I kneaded and kneaded the stiff dough, tried to stretch it into thin films, but I didn’t see anything like that. Yes, in general, I couldn’t see it; such dough is not capable of such “subtleties.” The same goes for medium consistency dough. Kneaded well, it will be very elastic and can be folded into an envelope several times without damage, and it will not tear from tension. Still, no matter what the consistency and moisture content of the dough, before you try to fold it into a ball or stretch it into a film, that is, check how the gluten is developed, give it a good rest and relaxation, lie down for 15-20 minutes. Without rest, the dough, being under tension, will strongly resist and tear.

I would like to separately note that knead the dough with your hands, that is, it is almost impossible to destroy gluten. But gluten can deteriorate not only from over-mixing; it is adversely affected by high temperature (closer to 40 degrees), too high acidity and very long refrigeration (on the third day of refrigeration, the weakening of gluten is already obvious). Here are a few pictures for illustration. This dough fermented for a very long time and the consistency became like custard.

If you knead the dough on it, it will tear, the cuts on the bread will spread unsightly, and the bread itself will have rough porosity.

Here is the dough that has suffered from overheating. Already during proofing you can see how it is torn. The finished loaf is also indicative.

In general, of course, I would like to dispel stereotypes, if they exist. Helpers in the kitchen, especially if it is high-quality, strong equipment that you can trust, is wonderful, it saves a lot of time and helps a lot when every minute counts. I have my bread machine for kneading dough, which was bought 5 or 6 years ago and now does its job perfectly. And there is a planetary mixer, but for some reason I mostly use a bread maker; it’s probably a matter of habit and it doesn’t make noise like an airplane on takeoff. But at the same time, it is absolutely necessary to know how to work with dough, to be able to do it, to feel the dough. This makes the bread tastier and better, the understanding of bread and its secrets is higher, and this, I must admit, is very valuable, this is your own native experience.

In general, friends, have a successful batch))

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No baked goods can be made without yeast dough, be it bread, pies, pizza or fragrant buns. At the same time, there are many ways to prepare it: sponged and straight, with fresh yeast and dry, for regular pies or for baked goods. In all cases, yeast plays a major role in the recipe. It is thanks to them that the dough turns out so tender and airy, and the products made from it are soft and incredibly tasty!

When kneading, you must remember that the flour for yeast dough must be sifted, and the room for aging the product must be warm. As the dough “rises,” it needs to be kneaded twice: the first time - immediately after the start of fermentation (usually this happens 1-1.5 hours after you start the dough); The second kneading should be done after waiting approximately the same time, after which you can immediately begin modeling and baking the products.

A safe way to prepare yeast dough
This recipe is convenient because it takes much less time than when preparing it using the sponge method. Use a wooden spatula for kneading; At the same time, make sure that the rotation of the blade is always carried out in the same direction. This contributes to better swelling and elasticity of the dough.

Ingredients for preparing regular straight dough:

• flour - 800 g;
  
• water or milk - 1 tbsp.;
  
• raw yeast - 20 g;
  
• egg - 1 pc.;
  
• melted butter or margarine, cooled until warm - 50 g (can be replaced with 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil);
  
• sugar - 100 g (if you need unsweetened dough, it will be enough to wait 2 teaspoons);
  
• 1/2 tsp salt.
  

Cooking technology:

1. Heat the milk or water to about 36 degrees (maintain the temperature; hot liquid may kill the yeast) and add the yeast. Stir thoroughly until the yeast is completely dissolved in the liquid.
   
2. Add eggs, previously beaten with sugar and salt.
   
3. Gently stir in the flour.
   
4. At the end of kneading, add butter or vegetable oil to the mixture and knead thoroughly until the dough comes off your fingers.
   
5. Form a ball, put it in a saucepan and, covering it with a napkin, put it in a warm place to “reach”.
   

Sweet sponge method
The dough prepared in this way, although it requires more time and attention during the preparation process, the pies from it also turn out incredibly appetizing and airy!

Ingredients for sponge dough:

• flour - 3 tbsp;
  
• milk - 300 ml;
  
• raw yeast - 50 g;
  
• eggs - 5 pcs.;
  
• sugar - 300 g (for unsweetened dough, limit yourself to 2 tablespoons);
  
• butter - ½ pack;
  
• margarine - ½ pack;
  
• vegetable oil - 4 tbsp. spoons;
  
• salt - ½ teaspoon.
  

Cooking technology:

1. In a small container, heat the milk to 36 degrees.
   
2. Add the yeast to the liquid and stir well until it is completely dissolved.
   
3. Add 1/2 tbsp sugar and mix thoroughly again.
   
4. Cover the container with the yeast mixture with a napkin and leave in a warm place for 40 minutes. This time is necessary for the yeast to activate.
   
5. Since the dough will rise and increase significantly in volume, take a large enamel pan or basin and pour in the liquid yeast.
   
6. Add another 1/2 tbsp sugar and half the flour. Knead the dough well. Cover with a towel and leave for another 40 minutes. During this time, the dough should increase in volume by 2-3 times.
   
7. Add all other ingredients to the dough, leaving only the flour, and mix thoroughly.
   
8. Now start mixing in the flour little by little. This should be done until the dough comes off your fingers.
   
9. Make a ball of dough, brush it with vegetable oil and, cover with a lid, leave to rise for 1 hour.
   

Your dough is ready to use! It's time to roll it out and shape future buns and fragrant pies!

Surely, every housewife has more than once asked questions regarding the correct preparation of this or that type of dough. What ingredients should I use? How to prepare choux pastry? How exactly and for how long do you knead the dough? What is the optimal time for him to “rest”? You can get answers to these and many other questions in this article about the secrets of the test.

What should I do to avoid the dough “sticking together” and changing its shape?

If you want to know how to prepare choux pastry, first, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with several rules for kneading it and then placing it on a baking sheet. Each of us has more than once encountered the problem of a sheet of dough being rolled out too thin. It is impossible to transfer it to a baking sheet without preserving the integrity of the “canvas”. Any attempt to place the layer on a baking sheet in this case ends up:

Breaks in the dough;
Its deformation.

To prevent this from happening, sprinkle the rolled out layer of dough with flour and carefully roll it onto a rolling pin. Carefully transfer the dough folded in this way onto a baking sheet and unroll evenly. This way, you will be able to maintain the integrity of the dough “canvas” and avoid its deformation. But there is one little secret - you should sprinkle the dough with flour sparingly, it is important not to overdo it. Otherwise, the dough will be too hard/stale. If the dough has been successfully transferred to the baking sheet and then unrolled, all that remains to be done is to sweep away the excess flour from its surface that has not had time to be absorbed by the dough.

In the process of preparing any type of dough, it is important to take into account the secrets and mysteries learned from famous chefs. So:

If you don’t know how to prepare choux pastry, learn its first secret: such dough is prepared, as a rule, without adding sugar or baking powder. It tastes rather bland, but when used in baked goods like eclairs, it can neutralize an overly sweet filling (cream);

You can add a little starch diluted in water to any dough. At the same time, you will achieve incredible fluffiness of buns, pies and muffins. Also, to maintain long-term softness of the dough, flour should always be sifted in order to saturate it with oxygen and remove excess impurities;

To ensure that your baked bread, pancakes, pancakes or pies are as fluffy as possible and retain their original softness for a long time, add a tablespoon of regular semolina to them;

Also, it’s a good idea to add milk or sparkling mineral water to any dough;

Please note that in the room where you are cutting and kneading dough, even minimal drafts are unacceptable.

Dough is a real stumbling block for many housewives. You can be an ideal cook, but the task of baking, for example, pies from homemade yeast dough still remains insoluble for you: the dough is either too dense, too sticky, or does not want to rise. Although there are thousands of recipes for preparing dough of all kinds in the world, and this matter, in general, does not present any complexity. Let's try to figure it out and find out how to prepare the perfect dough.

What is dough?

Dough is an intermediate product used in bakery, confectionery, pasta production, as well as in baking flour products at home. The dough is prepared from flour with the addition of ingredients such as water, yeast, sugar, salt, eggs, butter, spices, etc. The dough contains proteins, fats, carbohydrates, salts, acids and other substances. When kneading the dough, these substances can be present in it in various states of aggregation: in the form of a suspension, colloids, solutions, etc.

The most important ingredient of the dough is flour. Usually this is wheat flour. It is advisable to use high-grade flour for baking, without foreign odors, and not contaminated with beetle larvae. Before kneading the dough, the flour must be sifted: it will be enriched with oxygen, and will also be additionally cleared of random debris. It is better to take flour for baking with a low gluten content, but strudel, bread or puff pastry are better made from so-called durum wheat flour.

While kneading the dough, add sugar, which is necessary to improve the taste of future baked goods, as well as to stimulate the activity of yeast cells. Sugar must be added carefully, strictly in accordance with the recipe, otherwise if there is too much sugar, the dough will become heavy and too dense.

Depending on the recipe, you can add various dairy: milk as such, kefir, sour cream, cottage cheese, etc. Dairy products create lactic acid fermentation and contribute to better loosening of the dough.

For plasticity, add into the dough fats- vegetable oil and fats of animal origin. If you do not overdo it, the baked goods will turn out tender, aromatic and will not go stale for a long time. However, excess fat will limit the ability of the protein to swell and will inhibit the vital activity of yeast cells, so that the dough will not be loose, and the baked goods will turn out dry and tasteless.

Eggs The ones we add to the dough must be fresh and not too big. They will give your baked goods crispness and tenderness, strengthen the crust of the product, and improve its color and taste.

Yeast for the dough you can use both pressed and dry ones. Before use, they are diluted either in warm water or in warm milk. Be careful that the liquid is not too hot, otherwise the yeast cells will die. Cold liquid slows down the activity of yeast cells and the dough will rise more slowly.

To others baking powder The test includes baking soda and ammonium carbonate. In stores you can buy ready-made bags with a mixture called “Baking Powder.” For 400 g of flour, you usually take 10 g of this baking powder. Some housewives use vinegar-slaked soda as a leavening agent, but sometimes soda can ruin the taste of baked goods.

To improve the taste, you can add lemon zest, salt, vanillin, cinnamon and spices to the dough.

Types of test

Dough for dumplings according to GOST recipe:

Wheat flour - 700 g, water 260 g, eggs - 1.5 pcs., salt 15 g. Yield - 1 kg. Some of the flour is used to dust the rolling pin and roll out the dough.

Add water heated to 35 degrees, salt and eggs to the flour, knead until smooth, and let the gluten swell for 40 minutes.

The dough for dumplings is prepared in the same way, only another 25 g of sugar and 245 g of milk are added as ingredients.

Pancake dough without yeast: Beat 3 eggs, half a teaspoon of salt and 3 tbsp. l. sugar, add vanillin or vanilla sugar for taste. Dilute the resulting mixture slightly with milk (in total we need 0.5 liters of milk) and add 6 tbsp. l. flour (with a heap and be sure to sift through a sieve). Add the remaining milk and stir the dough. When you have kneaded the dough, you can pour boiling water into it and stir - the pancakes will turn out lacy without any soda.

Yeast pancake dough: take 660 g of flour, 50 g of margarine, 1.1 liters of milk, 40 g of sugar and vegetable oil. butter, 2.5 eggs, 40 g of pressed yeast and 15 g of salt. Salt, sugar, yeast diluted in warm water are dissolved in milk, the mixture is heated to 40 ° C, then eggs and flour are added, mixed, and the sour cream is added. butter and leave the dough for three to four hours in a warm place. The dough has increased in volume and is kneaded once.

Dough for pancakes It is prepared almost the same way: 1.2 liters of milk, 1200 flour, 35 g of yeast, 43 g of sugar, 1.5 eggs, 22 g of salt. The batter should be thicker than pancake batter.

Sponge (butter) yeast dough for pies and kulebyak: flour 641 g, sugar 34 g, table margarine 29 g, salt 10 g, press. yeast 19 g, water 258 g.

Pour water at a temperature of 40°C into a container (70% of the total required quantity), add yeast diluted in water, 60% flour. Stir all this, cover the container with a lid or a clean towel, and leave in a warm place for fermentation. Scientifically it is called dough. After about three hours, when this same dough has doubled in volume, add the rest of the liquid, flour, and knead the dough. Margarine is also put there. Leave the dough to rise for two and a half hours, during which it must be kneaded 2-3 times.

Puff pastry, which many consider the pinnacle of culinary excellence, can be easily prepared at home to surprise everyone with a luxurious Napoleon cake. To do this you will need a pack of margarine, two glasses of flour, salt and some water. Margarine is simply placed in a container with flour and chopped with a knife. During this action, the margarine particles are covered with flour, and to knead the dough, you just need to add 0.5 cups of water into the container. The finished dough is put in the refrigerator for half an hour or an hour, and then rolled out thinly and baked whatever your heart desires: cake layers, puff pastries, tongues, etc.

Shortbread dough It breaks all records in terms of ease of preparation. This is where millions of home baking lovers probably began their journey. Indeed, to mix three eggs, 200 grams of melted butter, a glass of sugar, salt and 2.5-3 glasses of flour, you don’t need any special skills or phenomenal memory. The resulting dense, buttery dough produces luxurious shaped cookies, shortbread pies with jam or cheese, and delicate homemade cakes.

Of course, there are many more types of dough, and each cook necessarily has his own secrets of preparing it. This means that in search of our ideal test, we will have to experiment. But in the end, everything will definitely work out!

There are many home baking recipes that you can use to bake a variety of products. The dough for them is also prepared from different ingredients, but all recipes have one thing in common: any dough needs kneading, the quality of which largely determines the final result. Yeast dough raises the most questions.

To prepare delicious yeast dough you will need:

0.5 kg of premium wheat flour; - 30 g of fresh yeast or 1 package (11 g) of dry yeast; - 1 glass of milk; - 2–3 tbsp. l. vegetable oil; - 1 tsp. Sahara; - 2 eggs; - 0.5 tsp. salt.

If the dough is being prepared for later use with sweet fillings, you can add more sugar, increasing the amount to 2 tablespoons

How to mix ingredients correctly

Before kneading the dough, prepare all the ingredients in advance, since only at room temperature will the yeast work quickly and efficiently, raising the dough. Dissolve the yeast in warm milk with dissolved sugar. In order for them to dissolve evenly and quickly, chop the yeast in the form of a briquette with a knife into small pieces.

Sift the flour through a sieve, saturating it with oxygen, in this case the baked goods will turn out more tender and airy. Pour the yeast into the well made in the center of the flour, then add the eggs, beaten with salt, and vegetable oil to the dough. It will help give the dough a more elastic consistency and simplify the subsequent procedure for working with it.

How to knead the dough

You can knead the dough either manually or using a food processor. In the first case, think in advance whether you have enough strength, since this process will take at least a quarter of an hour. The criterion for dough readiness is an elastic consistency in which it does not stick either to your hands or to the container where it is kneaded.

You can use a wooden spatula or spoon as improvised elements, but it is more convenient to use a device with a longer handle, since your hands will get less tired. For example, in the old days, dough was kneaded in a bucket with a wooden shovel, which looked like a miniature oar, since the latter was ideal for working with large volumes of products.

If you plan to use a food processor, choose the right attachment designed specifically for dough, since you cannot beat stiff dough with light whisks.

After the dough becomes elastic, beat it on the table or other cutting surface for several minutes, this will allow it to be additionally saturated with oxygen. Form the finished dough into a ball and cover with a paper napkin or towel, leave to rise for half an hour. Then you can use it both for making pies and for any other delicious yeast baked goods.