How long to knead bread by hand

This is the part of baking that is intimidating to many new bakers, and it doesn't need to be. Please take a few minutes to read this section and begin to learn what the dough should feel like and how to get it feeling like it is well developed.

Many of us started baking by using a bread machine or a Kitchen Aid stand mixer to mix and knead the dough. While this works reasonably well, and other methods are described below, you will learn more quickly how the dough should feel in the different stages of development if you use the tools god gives us, our hands.

Why is kneading dough important

For thousands of years humans have made good bread using only a crude bowl and their hands as tools. While commercial bakeries don't have the time to hand mix and shape thousands of loaves daily, much of what is wrong with commercial bread starts here in the first phase of bread making.

Mixing: Start by gathering all of the needed ingredients for the recipe.

If you are making a basic French style bread that uses just the basic four ingredients (flour, water, salt and yeast), measure or bett

what does bread dough feel like

what should bread dough look like before baking