My aunt swore her bread recipe needed exactly 1 hour of kneading

She told me the gluten won't develop unless you beat it into submission for a full 60 minutes. My arms were sore for two days after trying it, and the loaf came out dense as a brick. Turns out she learned it from some 1950s cookbook and never questioned it. How long do you actually knead dough, or am I just not built for this whole baking thing?

3 comments

3 Comments

miles_roberts13d ago

Yeah, I've definitely been there with the sore arms thing. One hour is way too much, that recipe sounds like a punishment. In my experience, most doughs are good after 8 to 10 minutes of hand kneading, and you can usually tell by feel. You want it to be smooth and springy, not sticky. Take this with a grain of salt, but if your arms are hurting, you're either kneading too long or pushing way too hard, it's more about folding and turning than really fighting it.

hannahsingh13d ago

Your aunt might have been onto something if she was working with whole grain or high-hydration dough that actually needs that kind of treatment to really get the gluten going. Most recipes from that era assumed you were using low gluten flour and no stand mixer, so a full hour was the only way to get a decent rise. You probably just need to match the kneading time to whatever grain and hydration level you're using instead of assuming 10 minutes works for every dough.

emery_flores11d ago

I gotta disagree with you here. If your aunt was using that 1950s cookbook, she was probably working with low gluten flour and no electric mixer, so a full hour of hand kneading might have actually been the only way to get any real structure in the dough back then. @hannahsingh, you mentioned matching kneading time to the grain and hydration, and that's exactly right - but for a standard all-purpose flour dough from that era, 10 minutes is often not enough to build gluten, especially if you're not using high protein bread flour. A dense brick loaf after one hour of kneading sounds like the recipe itself was wrong, not the time, because most gluten development happens in the first 15-20 minutes of hand kneading anyway, but an hour is still overkill for almost any dough.