Destroyed Gluten?
First of all hello! I've been an avid reader of this forum for a while now but this is my first post.
I've been baking all my life and I started my sourdough "journey" about three years ago. I have a go-to recipe (which i will write below) and except for a few times where I over proofed or something, it's been pretty good.
However, I was making that same recipe today and decided to try kneading with my kitchenaid (with a dough hook) and it turned into liquid. Let me be more specific:
I do a 10% sourdough feed with 100% hydration in the morning. I do the same thing at night and also start my autolyse with white flour (10% protein*) 70% hydration. The next day I join everything together add salt and stretch and fold for a while and proceed to do that during that day, shaping at night and letting it rest in the fridge to bake the morning after.
This time, I did a bit of the stretch and fold and then into the mixer it went and then puff just mush. I'm going to try to stretch and fold it back to something manageable but if anyone knows what's going on, I'd really appreciate the information :D. I've searched for someone with the same problem but haven quite find this exact scenario.
Thanks in advance!
Lucía
*that's the highest protein flour I can find in supermarkets in Buenos Aires.
Hi Lucía
what you saw was normal for any dough when kneading it mechanically. It gathers itself first and becomes tight and smooth and then 'breaks down' into a weak and shaggy, almost soupy, shapeless mass, looking like porridge, and then gathers itself together and becomes smooth and shiny again as you continue kneading it.
This 'dough becoming undone' can happen several times in a row as you knead it, until you reach a sufficient or desirable level of gluten development - films of gluten thin and stretchy enough, to your taste.
I knead dough intensely about 20 min prior to shaping, and I love 10% protein bread flour, so no, even 5 min on the highest speed when my dough if fully ripe and nearly ready to be shaped doesn't destroy gluten. Instead, it develops it into the best bread ever.
After kneading, I can stretch and fold it several times if I want irregular open pores in its crumb in the 20 min of rest in the final minutes of fermentation and then again when I preshape and shape the loaf. No problem.
Destroyed gluten looks like a gluey sticky stringy mass (not mushy, not like porrige at all), sticky to touch and it stretches infinitely without breaking up. The dough then becomes so sticky that it is difficult to wash off your hands or your equipment (dough hook, bowl, dough scraper, etc.)
Considering that Kitchen Aid mixer is not even able to overdevelop gluten to the point of breakdown because the manufacturer prohibits using long kneading times or high speed kneading in it, don't worry. You haven't destroyed anything. You simply messed up the layers you created by the previous stretches and folds and will create the new ones after kneading.
To learn how destroyed gluten looks and feels like to touch, take a cup of flour and a bit of water, blend it, let it rest for 30-180 min refrigerated, and start kneading it in your mixer. See how it changes with time. Give it rest from time to time, for the mixer to cool down, since it can't knead longer than for 4 min by design. And then you will know. Try to destroy it. It is not easy to destroy gluten, especially in KA mixer. With KA on its low speed and 4 min kneading periods, with at least 30 min rests in between, it would take you the whole day to get there.
m.
wow I'm super exited to try this!
Yesterday I thought 'what if I just keep going' but I was making a lot of bread and I didn't want it all to go to waste if it didn't work out.
Thank you for the info! I will try this right now
"since it can't knead longer than for 4 min by design"
I don't believe that is correct. I can knead as long as I want on mine and have done it regularly for years.
It's in the manual. 2-4 min on 1st max and 2-4 min on 2nd speed max for yeasted dough.
I didn't read the manual or didn't pay attn to it initially and kneaded as much as was necessary to develop gluten and it destroyed both KA mixer and KA food processor eventually. After several repairs within the space of 3 months, I simply gifted my mixer to a pastry chef, this mixer is great for batters and whipping things, and I switched to another brand, better designed specifically for yeasted dough (or sourdough for that matter).
My KA mixer was PRO LINE Series. I read that older models were sturdier, like old Artisan, etc.