Why do you need dough kneadingAuthor Elena Zheleznyak,
🔗Today we will reveal the secret of another bread subtlety - kneading and folding during fermentation, or rather, we will touch on a question that, I know, interests many. Why and why do we ferment the dough before proofing, when, in theory, it is possible to mold it immediately after kneading and put it in a mold or basket. Why are these unnecessary manipulations and time and why it is impossible to "cut the path" to fresh homemade bread? It turns out that bread also has its own rules, violation of which will lead to not very tasty results.
I remembered right away that I had to let the dough ferment, rise well, and then mold, but I couldn't explain why it was that way. Once I even got into a situation where it was necessary to shed light on this issue, and nothing but general phrases about the pores of the crumb, gluten and crumbs came to mind.
I somehow got my mom to start baking with sourdough. She suddenly wondered why I bake bread at home and why it was with sourdough, and what is so special and interesting about it. She even asked me to share the rye sourdough with her! Shortly thereafter, several loaves of white leavened bread emerged from the hot oven in my parents' kitchen. I was surprised and flattered that my mother recognized my experience and even used it. At the same time, I was eager to give advice, tell me how to do it right and how it should be. I asked my mother in detail how she bakes, when she does what and how she succeeds, especially since she did not have any auxiliary equipment such as a bread machine or a kneader, which greatly save time and effort, and she herself worked from eight to four. It turned out that in the morning my mother put the leaven on the battery (this was in winter, the batteries were allowed), and when she came home from work she quickly kneaded the dough, molded a thick sausage from it (what kind of roll or batard!) And put it in the oven with the lamp on. After a couple of hours, she simply turned on the oven, and after 40-50 minutes she took out a ready-made flat loaf.
That is, there was no “poking the dough with her finger to check the proofing”, “preheated the oven to”, “baked with steam for the first 10 minutes” ... All this was not important! In general, it was possible to put up with all this, especially since in the same bread makers the dough begins to bake according to the same principle, without preliminary heating. And even the flaws in molding were not so important, because in factories, molded bread, which is baked in aluminum forms - "bricks", is not molded by anyone, the dough is simply thrown into the mold in a piece and it fits and bakes there. But the fact that she "leaked" fermentation, I could not understand in any way. In fact, considering that this is my own mother, and what she tries and does in spite of and in spite of, I needed to be praised and rejoiced, and I sent to defend the purity of baking technology. How is it, and where did the fermentation with the kneading go? Mom then asked: why? After all, without them, the dough still fits, and the process as a whole becomes much faster.
And it's true. To this I didn’t really answer her, except for the general phrases I wrote about above (about gluten and crumbs), and attempts to convince: “try it, you will immediately notice the difference”. In fact, this question was not clear to me for a long time. Intuitively, I understood that the dough needed fermentation and kneading, but I could not explain. Now this topic has somehow cleared up in my head.
Have you noticed that the dough that has been kneaded or folded fits faster afterwards? Moreover, its internal structure is noticeably improved, the pores become larger, and their walls are thinner and more elastic.
This is as a consequence. And there are several reasons, and the most basic of them is yeast and the peculiarities of their vital activity. As you know, the "yeast-free" sourdough also contains yeast, but not cultured store yeast, but the so-called wild yeast, which got there with air and flour. It is thanks to them that our sourdough bread turns out to be voluminous and fluffy. To live, yeast needs to feed on sugars and breathe oxygen, almost like humans. In a dough, yeast, in fact, is in a closed space and has a very limited amount of air for life, which sooner or later dries up. Moreover, in the process they emit carbon dioxide, at the same time loosening the dough and shortening their life, because they cannot live without oxygen. By crunching or folding, we remove the accumulated carbon dioxide from the dough, saturate it with oxygen and let the yeast breathe fresh air in order to live on, which means there is, because for yeast all life is food. And also to the word about food: kneading or folding (the latter is preferable) move (stir) the yeast in the dough, which allows them to find new food, because they cannot travel on their own in the dough, and, having eaten all the sugars "at home" and would be glad to move in search of food, but they cannot. By the way, this is why folding is more effective than just rolling. During kneading, the dough is simply removed, beaten on it, squeezed with one single purpose - to blow it off. During folding, in addition to removing excess carbon dioxide, there is an active movement of yeast and its nutrients in the dough, as a result of which, by changing its dislocation, the yeast receives a new portion of food and oxygen.
Kneading and folding allows you to get a more uniform and beautiful crumb, which is facilitated by both the "mixing" of yeast and existing air bubbles in the dough, and the strengthening of gluten during fermentation and folding of the dough. The strong and elastic gluten is able to trap a lot of the gas produced by the yeast, which will make the bread thick and porous.
Here, for example, bread, which immediately after kneading was put into a mold to fit (yes, mother's))), and bread made from fermented and repeatedly folded dough.
Sometimes the dough can be kneaded a lot - 5-6 times per fermentation, and sometimes not more than two. What does it depend on? From the strength of flour and its ability to retain gas inside the dough (this is called gas-retaining ability). The latter can be strong or weak and depends on the strength of the flour and its gluten. The dough made from strong flour with a strong gas-retaining ability turns out to be strong, elastic, even a little rubbery, it has a very strong frame, it is able to ferment for a long time without losing its properties and quality, perhaps, becoming more elastic and softer. By periodically folding the dough during fermentation, we simultaneously strengthen the gluten and make it more elastic, so that it can hold all the carbon dioxide that the yeast produced. Inside the dough, with well-developed and at the same time elastic gluten, pores are able to stretch into thin-walled transparent bubbles and films, forming the very structure that will then look with admiration at the lumen and call it “lace”.
For example, the dough for chabatta, which is kneaded from strong flour, can be folded up to 5-7 times and you all know how beautiful the crumb of this bread is. If such a dough is kneaded only once, this will affect primarily the porosity, it will be uneven, with huge caves and holes, and the pores themselves will be rough and thick-walled.
But a weak dough with a weak gas-holding ability, on the contrary, cannot be folded often, from this it can weaken even more and lose the ability to hold gas (and eventually deflate). As a rule, flour with a weak gas-holding ability is considered to be flour with a weak gluten (with a small percentage of it). You need to knead it carefully and ferment it less.
To summarize, it turns out that fermentation and kneading are necessary to improve the structure of the crumb and the development of yeast in the dough. The fact that bread made from dough, which has been properly fermented and kneaded, turns out to be more beautiful and tastier, once again it is possible not to say, this is understandable.
Good luck and delicious bread!
