Baking Homemade Bread: The Dough

Bread dough is a living, breathing being. Well, for the most part. As soon as flour, water, and yeast are mixed together, a culinary child is born. Add salt, and it has quite a personality, too! From the moment these components are combined, they are no longer separate, but form a much greater whole. And this greater whole, if given enough time, care, and technique, can become long-fluted baguettes and sultry sandwich loaves within hours.

Dough, when first mixed, will often look chunky and crumbly. Make sure the dry ingredients are as well-mixed as possible, but do not worry if there is still some grit to your dough - kneading will take care of that. The hydration of any particular dough is subject to the recipe in question. In general it is around 50% hydration, which means that there is about 50% water to flour, by total volume. Unless the dough in question is "rustic" (such as ciabatta or focaccia doughs, among others) the goal texture should be tacky and silky, but not overly sticky or overly dry.

There are three essential steps to creating healthy, well-structured, and potentially delicious dough:

1. Mix Your Ingredients - using either a stand mixer or a large bowl, add the water and yeast and stir gently. By waiting a few moments after this task the yeast will "spruce up" and be extra-special-ready-to-go for the other ingredients (older directions refer to this step as "proofing," but seeing as there are several uses for that word in baking, I like to cut the confusion and use a different term). Any other liquid ingredients will go in at this point, being well-mixed with the water before adding dry ingredients. Next, add the flour, salt, and any other dry ingredients you wish (such as many types of spices, herbs, nuts, fruit and vegetable chunks etc...). Use the paddle attachment on your stand mixer or if mixing by hand take the back rim of the bowl with your left hand and rotate clockwise while using a wet rubber spatula moving in the opposite direction against the ingredients. This too-ing and fro-ing of opposite directions works wonders to mix thoroughly the dry and wet materials together. 
2. Knead The Dough - once the dough is mixed together it ought to be uniform in texture with little or no dry ingredients remaining in the mixing bowl. There are no style points awarded for the texture of freshly-mixed dough, that comes into play during this next step, kneading. Lightly flour a counter top with flour (the type does not matter) and drop the blob of freshly-mixed dough into the center. Dust your own hands with flour and keep them dusted to minimize the amount of sticking that may occur. Gently fold the dough over onto itself in halves or thirds. Repeat this several times until the blob seems more uniform and is not entirely sticky. Ideally, the texture will end up being tacky (but not super-sticky) and silky. Now you are ready to properly knead. If using a stand mixer, insert the dough hook attachment and allow the mixer to run on medium speed for about six or seven minutes. To knead by hand (this is the fun part, I think!), press your right palm into the center of the dough, spreading the dough forward. When this motion is complete, gently grasp the far edge of the dough with your fingers and fold it back over itself (as you did to prepare the dough for kneading). Now repeat those motions with your left hand, working in the opposite direction. I like to work the dough in equal angles stretching to my left and right while kneading. Kneading by hand takes roughly ten minutes for evenness of texture. Continue to add flour if the dough is overly sticky, but do not dry it out! The key word here is "tacky," and tacky does not mean sticky or dry...it means "tacky." 
3. Shape To Your Heart's Desire - after the dough is adequately kneaded and sufficiently smooth, let it rest on the counter for several minutes to allow the gluten to take a breather. By kneading the dough vigorously the gluten strands inherent in the dough have been stretched and strengthened, promoting a heartier rise and ultimately better-looking end results. Once it has rested, shape the dough into your desired form. This is purely your decision - there are thousands of ways to shape bread. The sky is the limit, here. I suggest starting out with the simplest of forms, the French boule. "Boule" is merely the French word for "ball," but the boule is an easy and visually-pleasing shape. To make aboule, rest your left hand on the left side of the dough place your right hand towards the bottom of the right side. Gently rotate the dough using your right hand in a counter-clockwise motion, with some of the force also pressing lightly down against the surface of the counter top. Your left hand is to be used as the guiding anchor for this motion. The idea is that the dough gets pressured against the working surface and spun on a central point, slowly stretching the skin of the blob in a spiral. By doing this action over and over again (hey, everything takes practice!) each successive boule will become very round and smooth. This process is called "rounding off." 

And that is that! Your dough has been successfully mixed, shaped, and should now rest for a few hours.  There is a fair amount of delicacy to the steps mentioned above...any questions? Please do not hesitate to email me!  To learn more about the resting and fermentation of your dough, look for my corresponding hub!

Bread dough can be messy, and often is, even when you have been baking for years.  Counter tops will be sticky, bowls will be tacky, and mixers will be dirty.  The trick is reducing the mess made by as much as possible while you make it.  I suggest using a little more flour than you think you need to lubricate a counter top or other surface used to knead the dough.  While this may result in excess flour when all is said and done, just brush it back into your flour bucket (assuming there are no clumps that have been mixed with water [or especially yeast!]).  By doing this you can make sure that resting dough has more of a buffer between your surfaces, and unless a recipe calls for a very hydrated dough, this should not become a problem.  

When transferring kneaded dough into a large bowl to ferment, spray the bowl with oil to save yourself a major headache.  Oil washes away much easier than dried dough.  And for any bowls, utensils, or sheet pans that are covered in drying or dried bits of dough, soak them in warm water (it does not even have to be soapy) for a half-hour or more.  Remember, flour loves water, but too much water makes flour (and its resulting dough) very runny.  You certainly do not want this to happen before baking, but it is a close friend when cleaning up. 

NOTE: I have known many a baker to use spray oil on their counter tops before kneading their respective doughs.  This can be useful, but keep in mind that oil reduces friction as well as sticking, so if you seek to either knead or shape your dough with ease, use very little oil or none at all.  Spray oil can be your best buddy while baking, but it can hurt rather than help if you do not think it through.