Transcripts
1. Kneading bread by hand, first step: Hi, everyone, and welcome
for this new video. And in today's video, we're
going to learn how to knead the dough manually from the
very beginning until the end. And I will tell you
all the subtle things that you need to
know to master it. By the way, I'm
the French baker. I worked as professional baker for more than 15 years now, and now I'm a teacher and
consultant for bakers and amateur and anyone who want to know and learn
more about bakery. I'm happy to help you. And yeah, let's start with the lesson.
2. 1 Can we knead without autolyse: Everyone. In this video, we're going to knead
the dough by hand. We're going to start
quickly with one thing why it's good to do a
natalis and a ferments. Because I just mixed water, flour and sour dough together. I'm going to show
you why it's not possible to knead by hand,
the dough right now. I just water my
hand simply because when you're going to
pull everything break, you pull everything break. You see? It's impossible. There's no gluten network. So now we're gonna mix,
nothing's going to happen. I mean, we can do it,
but it's going to take a long time,
lots of effort. So that's why, in this case, it's very good to
leave the dough to rest for at least half
an hour to 1 hour. So I just mixed the
ingredients together very quickly without the salt,
and I'm going to leave it. And in 40 minute, we will
need everything by hand. You will see the difference.
Now it just break. See you in 40 minutes.
3. 2 Kneading, the beginning: It's been 40 minutes.
And now we can see already that you
can stretch the dough, and you can see the gluten
network a little bit better. So now it's time to knit by
hand together. Let's do it. So first, I'm just going to
put my dough where I need it. So kneading the dough by
hand is a process that can help you to have a
nice bread, compared to, for example, the
video where we make bread without kneading at all, but it's a very,
very long process. It can take 15 to half an hour. I'm going to do it slowly first, but you see, you can
stretch the dough already. I put the salt in
my dough in order to salt the dough
properly, of course. And you might think it's already good because
it's kind of smooth, but it's not good already. Many people need
to do differently. But there's a right way to do, which is the way that I'm
4. 3 Kneading, mid time: And this is very
important for do, for the gluten, specifically. And the thing is
we're going to do this movement the whole time. And so far, I do it, and
you can see clearly that it's not smooth and I still have some dough
on my hand everywhere. And as long as it's
sticky like this, it means it's not ready. So it's a very
tiring process also, because you're going to feel your muscle in your
forearms, definitely. You see the dough, we
gave the fermentos, so that means the gluten
start to work already. The gluten started
to do his job. Like this, we come with a dough that holds
itself at least, but how we can see the
dough is not ready yet. Well, simply, the
technique is the window. If I take the window,
and if you stretch, it break. You see? And in break, there's
no gluten network, no real gluten network. So for this, we need
to knead the dough. Of course, the mixer, it
does the job very well, but by hand is doable. It just gonna take some time. The technique for this to stretch the dough to fold
the dough on itself, to incorporate some air
and to work the gluten. This is very important.
The technique, some people they do
like this, you know, they do this, they push, they fold, push, fold. Push, fold, but I
hate this technique. Why? Because it just
crush the gluten, and it make it more
fragile, okay? It makes it fragile. It doesn't build it really. It doesn't need it
really also. You see? I tried to get back my dough, and it's already
quite difficult. It just crush the gluten. You just press it
on the surface, and you don't really
do anything to it. So, this is a technique that
most people do, I would say. But, yeah, it's not
the technique at all. The dough needs to be stretch
you don't need to be pull, that don't need to be fold, and that's how you need the dog. For this, the right technique is the one I'm doing right now. There is many technique and one really good
technique, which is this.
5. 4 Kneading, Final step: You know, you have
different type of mixer. You have some mixer with
a hook, just like this. This is called spiral
for the French, at least, and you have
the oblique in France. It's like a big ball. The hook
is a little bit like this, still still doing
the same thing, stretching, pulling,
capering air. And the last few years, you see different type of
mixer. They have two arms. When you turn it
on, the movement is they take the door like this. They just do this. They pull, stretch, pull, stretch, okay? So if I do like
this, not much is happening because I'm doing it all the time on
the same place. So what's happening this mixer? There's the two arm
that do this job, and the ball is continuously
turning also on one side. That means the dog do this job. So now I'm mechanically turning myself because
I don't have a ball. I do the movement of
the machine. You see? It's like turning all the time. Alla. And this is the
movement we want. So you can do this. This is
a really good movement also, but the problem is you're not going to do it
long because you're gonna have your shoulder
that's gonna be in pain like mine right
now very quickly, especially if you do
quite a lot of dough. Here I have two kilo dough, which is not much, but after some time, it's a lot. Remember sometime to take the door around just
to clean a little bit. And you see the dough is
still sticky on my handle, so it's not finished yet. Like I said, you can
do this movement. You can do it for 20 minutes. It's gonna be pain in the
butt or the other one, the one we do generally by hand, you take the dough
with your two hands, and you pull it first. You slap the dough and
you throw it on top. And then you take 90 degree. You take this part. Pull Again, 90 degree, you pull the bottom, and you put over in order
to incorporate air. Here, you put under, you pull, and you fold. Pull, fold, 90 degree, pull, fold, 90
degree, pull, fold. And you repeat this movement. In the same time, what we want is that when you
fold, you'll do. But now, in the same time, you want to stretch a
little bit with your hand. You want to pull
like this. You want to pull a little bit like
this to stretch the dog. So you want to stretch up, you want to stretch on the side, and you fall on itself. And this is the right movement. Who's going to build your dough. And you will know exactly
when your dough is ready. When you have nothing on
your hand, it's starting. You see, I have less on my hand. And when the whole
surface will be clean, as long as it's not clean, your dough is not needed,
and you feel it also. So sometime like now, it breaks, you see. But at the beginning, it breaks, and it go in pieces, you know, and it's not
comfortable to use or to hold. But the more it
gets to the point, even if it breaks,
it's still right. The thing is when
you kit by hand, the dough is basically
in the ambient air, and all the air when we pull, when we fall like this, the
air here is 19 degrees. So we corporate every
time 90 degree hair. So the dough is cooling down. So that's why you need to make warm dough
at the beginning, especially because the hand
kneading takes a long time, it cool down even more. So this is very important to put warm dough
at the beginning.
6. 5 Kneading, last move: Oh, of course, you can
slap the dog the way I do. It's even recommended. Like slap you pull,
and you throw. Slap you pull, and
you pull over. It's like you slap it and
you pull, and you fold it. You slap it, you pull,
and you fold it. Slap it, you pull, fold it. You see my hand, it's
getting cleaner and cleaner. We want to build the gluten. And the more you're
going to do it. Of course, the more
you're going to suffer. But you're gonna feel also that your dog is
getting some strength. You're going to feel that
it's harder to stretch it. That means the dough
get elasticity, and that's exactly what we want. And you start to see already
that might do it quite good. Now we can try to do the window. Handsame process, we pull, we take, we stretch. And we see that it's starting
to get there, you see? I still break, but we
start to have something. So it's not ready yet
because it break. And I can feel in my hand that my dough is also getting colder. So once you finish to
knead your dough by hand, you need to put it in a warm place because now
if I take the temperature, we have 21.7 degree. My dough was 25,
and now it's 21.7. So it's a very
tiring process, huh? But this is the best chance
to have a very nice bread. So if you have the patience, if you want to exercise
a little bit also, but you can see already that look at the
dough, the difference. That's why it's very
interesting for you to watch it completely the whole process because you see the change that we
want to see in the dough. But also at this right moment, when I slap the dough,
when I pull it, and when you look
here at the limit, if you see that it's breaking, if you see that it's
breaking some kind of things like this,
it's not ready. When you will slap
it and you will have something very
straight like this, something very smooth, you know that the whole gluten
hold together. The whole dough has strength. So this is the time where you want slowly, but we
are getting there. Of course, mixer
do a better job. Mix are going to
need to dough very quickly incorporate
some cold air also. When you knead very quickly, it's the friction, you know, like any type of friction. The faster you go, the
faster it warm up. The friction warm up things. If you want to do,
like, very quick, It will be possible, you know? You can be extremely tired and even is not gonna warm up
as much as a mixer will. So we just have to be aware
that after the hand kneading, we need to warm up the dough. And this type of mixing
gives strength to the dough. Gonna allow your dough to
keep a very nice shape. Like right now, you see
it keeps a nice bowl. If you have no strength, it's just going to spread everywhere. And then when you bake,
that's what allows you to have a very nice ear cut, and it's going to be
very easy to shape, very nice to
manipulate in general. It doesn't stick to
the surface anymore. We are there soon. And when I slap and I pull, I
see it's better. And like I said
at the beginning, it clean up my end slowly until the heels very dry,
so it's not going to go. But here, it's almost
clean. I feel very tired. You can also leave
it for 5 minutes. It helps also a little bit. But I don't like to
leave it 5 minutes because it gives five more
minutes to cool down, which is not really
what we want. I'm going to leave it five
minute, and I come back here. It's been a few minutes.
Aye 4 minutes exactly. Now you stretch the window test. It's I would say almost perfect. If you stretch more
and more, of course, it breaks, but we
have something, but I'm going to still
need a little bit by hand, just to give a little
bit extra strength. But really not much
because now I can feel my dog is starting to get
the strength that you need. And even when I slap it here, I can see it stay here
in it does one line, and you can see, even you
can see how hard it is. You can see here the bubble. There's a bubble when you need. See? My hand are clean, and when it starts to get
hard to stretch it like now, that means it's the
time where you need to stop to need Yoto. I'm gonna stop. Well.
7. 6 Final result: I want to put my dough in a
warm place because now look, now we are 21, so we
lost even 0.7 degrees. And now that's the time
your dough is needed, because you have the
bubble, you can touch it. It's not sticky to your hand. It's not sticky to the surface. So you just make a
round and in the box. And from now, we have
seen everything we needed to see for the
kneading by hand. This is what you have to do. I gave you all the explanation. There's one way to
need by hand, okay, one way or the two
way with the one I showed you where you do
like this, but gonna suffer. So this video will stop here. I hope it's very
helpful for you. I hope you're gonna
need do by hand. And you will have some
super nice bread. Thank you for watching.
Make a good bread and see you in the
next video. Chow.
Vincent Baker, Artisan Baker & Home Bakery Mentor
