Hello everyone, I am Xiao Gao Jie.
Today I will talk about a few simple kneading techniques.
Kneading is dealing with gluten.
If you understand gluten, your kneading experience will be enjoyable.
I will talk about three aspects:
The formation of gluten, the strength of gluten, and the arrangement of gluten.
The main purpose of kneading is to help gluten formation.
In fact, the word "help" should be emphasized,
because gluten is formed by yourself.
Kneading is just to help it form better.
After mixing all-purpose flour and water, it sticks to your hands and breaks easily.
Wait for 20 minutes.
Now you see, it's getting longer.
There is no gluten in dry flour, but there are two proteins that make up gluten.
When the two proteins reach the water, they will join together to form gluten.
I haven't kneaded it yet. This gluten is already very strong.
How strong the gluten is, directly related to the flour you use.
This is cake flour.
There is no difference after 20 minutes.
No film at all.
Look at bread flour.
Regular bread flour is sold out. I only found this stone-milled bread flour.
It can pull very long, and the gluten is very strong.
This is built-in function of wheat flour, It's a pity if you don't use it.
Come back and see the all-purpose flour dough.
Not very smooth.
Now we will knead the dough
to help it mix evenly.
It doesn’t matter what kind of kneading method.
Stand mixer, bread machine, or hand kneading are all OK.
The purpose is to make not yet connected gluten proteins
to join together.
After a minute or two, the gluten is stretched out and a smooth surface is formed.
For most recipes, the dough is ready. You can stop kneading now.
In the process of resting afterwards, gluten connection will be more complete.
You understand this simple fact,
and master this basic method,
the kneading process of most recipes will become very easy.
Let's take a look at some other situations.
Bread recipes have higher requirements for gluten formation.
There are many ways.
The most direct way is to use the stand mixer to knead the dough.
All ingredients except butter are mixed first.
Soon it comes together.
At this time, gluten has not formed.
Continue to stir.
Accelerating gluten formation.
After 6-7 minutes, most of the gluten formed.
Add butter.
While mixing the butter, let the rest gluten proteins to connect completely.
After a few more minutes the surface of the dough is shiny.
Even its wrinkle lines are very smooth curves.
You feel this dough is ready.
We do a window pane test.
Can be stretched thin.
But it doesn't seem to be strong.
It broke with light pull.
In fact, the gluten has formed at this time.
But it was wound up by the machine.
Now the gluten is very tight.
Pull it a little bit and it will break.
Give it a few minutes, the gluten will be relaxed.
look,
Can pull out a large uniform film.
This is how it looks with stone milled flour.
It will look more transparent if regular bread flour is used.
If you see it is easily torn off, when you first test gluten,
and make a wrong judgement that the dough is not knead enough.
Turn on the machine and continue to knead the dough,
After a long kneading period,
the gluten that has been formed will be torn off.
especially the dough with a high water content.
Plus fermentation of yeast is kicking off.
A lot of gas begins to accumulate in the dough.
It will be hard to pull out a thin film again.
Look at this dough which was kneaded by machine for a long time.
Its surface is no longer smooth.
Check the gluten.
You already see the gluten on the surface is broken
The film is not very strong, and it breaks with a light pull.
Look at these four dough pictures again.
No gluten,
gluten is basically formed,
gluten is improved.
and gluten starts to break.
If kneading by hand, you can choose a easier method.
For example, our baguette recipe.
After the water and flour are mixed, let dough rest, and knead it. Let it rest again and knead it again.
Repeat the rest and knead process two or three times.
Be careful, try to avoid the dough ferment too fast at the beginning
It can be blown a big bubble, when the dough is ready.
The gluten is already very thin, and strong.
The most labor-saving way to make bread dough is actually kneading-free.
Look at this dough.
Bread flour and ice water.
Mix and then put it into the refrigerator overnight.
Check the gluten the next day.
The gluten is strong without kneading.
With time the gluten formed nicely,
which is the theory behind no-knead bread.
Usually bread dough is relatively soft, high water content is helping formation of gluten.
For example, we made no-knead potato bread.
Without kneading, it is very soft and tasty.
So it is not true that the dough can't form any gluten without kneading.
There are also some special cases.
Particularly stiff dough.
For example, handmade noodles.
The water content is very low.
Dry dough is not helping the formation of the gluten.
So after finishing the first kneading, rest the dough, and knead it again.
Repeat rest and knead process.
The dough is very smooth in the end.
During the rolling process, dry flour is not needed at all.
Second, let ’s take a look at the strength of gluten.
I have a piece of gluten
to show you its strength.
After kneading and stretching, the gluten is tight.
Press it and bounce back immediately.
It can't be pulled long. With a little bit force, it breaks.
If in a recipe, you can't roll out, when making a flat bread. You can't pull it long, when making stretched noodles.
Give it a some time, the gluten will relax.
The surface is no longer tight.
And can be pulled long.
At this time, your flat bread is easy to roll out.
Your noodles can also be stretched long.
So you know when to knead the dough, you also need to know when not to knead the dough,
and let the dough rest.
Some people say that her flat bread is never round.
You can't roll a round flat bread with this dough to start with.
You round it first, then let it rest for a few minutes and come back to roll it.
Let the strength of gluten control the shape of the dough,
It will be easy to roll it very round.
This is also using the contraction of gluten.
Third, let's take a look at the arrangement of gluten.
It is actually a way of controlling the gluten strength.
Look at the braided bread.
Every little dough is rolled out first.
After the gluten is stretched, roll it up.
When the gluten is arranged in this way,
there is gluten force that the dough is contracting towards the center.
So after baking, each strand looks round and full.
Today I talked about three aspects of gluten, while the focus is on the formation of gluten.
Gluten proteins are in the flour,
so the flour you chose to use,
has already predetermined the quality of the gluten in the dough.
Most recipes use normal flour
But some special recipes need to choose the right flour.
Thank you for watching, I'm Xiao Gao. See you in the next episode ^^