To Knead Or Not To Knead? Does It Matter?

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Dear Nosey,

To knead or not to knead; what is the difference? A friend told me he likes kneaded bread because the texture is chewier, I prefer a softer bread. Is kneading really the difference?
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Dear Karen,

For this I went to the Internet, and gathered some expert opinion and some anecdotal evidence.  The very first piece I looked at was an article on Slate, Can Nancy Baggett’s Kneadlessly Simple help me make a decent loaf of bread? http://www.slate.com/id/2216080/pagenum/all/#p2 from which I pulled this key concept:

But a critical aspect of the no-knead method’s popularity is that it doesn’t force you to abdicate credit to a machine. Its steps are long, but lazy. Five minutes here and there over the course of a day or so, and—this is critical for people who work outside their homes—there are even several moments when you can use the refrigerator to delay the rising process further to fit your schedule. Here’s the basic idea: In the modern past, bread recipes had you develop gluten—the springy but strong network of proteins that capture the carbon-dioxide bubbles the yeast creates in the dough—by manhandling the dough by hand or mixer. If you didn’t knead efficiently or long enough, you’d end up with tough, unpleasant bread. But if you slow the rising time down—in fact, an older approach to baking—the agitation caused by the bubbling yeast itself can bring together the gluten matrix. It’s what Baggett calls "micro-kneading." Baggett adds another tweak to Lahey’s standard no-knead MO: The dough is first mixed using ice water and chilled for several hours before rising. This step stuns the yeast into submission and lets enzymes get to work converting the flour’s starch into sugars, which makes for a browned crust and a better-tasting loaf.

The idea is certainly sound, as it is the method used to make bagels and soft pretzels.  Let your little yeasty-beasties develop at a much reduced rate, and let them have their lusty little way with your starches and sugars for a much longer time, to achieve the same effect — the development of the stretchy gluten protein matrix in the dough.

Apparently, the answer to your question is that it is *not* necessary to knead your dough to activate the gluten matrix.  It time is a constraint though, a little kneading is better than none at all, I think.  I use a bread machine for the sole purpose of saving my aging muscles from the task of, as Ms. Dickerman says above, ‘pummeling the gluten into submission’.  I usually do not make my bread until the day I run out of my current loaf.  For that reason, I would rather have bread yet that day, and not tomorrow.  The exception, as I’ve remarked before, is bagels and soft pretzels which are always made with a cold retarded step.

When I first started making bread, and before I invested in my bread machine, I used a ’sorta-kinda’ kneading method.  A two loaf recipe called for about seven cups of flour and the other ingredients.  Unless you have arms like Chyna, the big WWF wrestler, you are *not* going to be able to incorporate all that flour into the amount of water in the recipe. You will come out about a cup shy.  No matter, put some of the extra cup or so on your work surface, and flop your moist doughball-to-be out on to it.  By flopping and stretching the dough, and adding more flour, you will very quickly incorporate all of the required flour. That is the point where you can gather up your now respectably coherent doughball and put it into your oiled bowl for its first rise.  If you do this the night before, just put the entire bowl into the fridge, otherwise just cover it and let it sit and work on its own.  Eventually, you will have a big shiny doughball with a nice, matte elastic surface.  From there on, you are free to go on to multiple risings, or punch it down, let it rest a few minutes, and shape it for baking.

Time is the only consideration, it seems.  If you’re an organized person, and plan to make bread for your family every day, just leave your starter out on the counter, instead of refrigerating it after you feed it, and leave your unkneaded dough out for as long as it takes to rise.