This is what every book promised me over the years, and I have never seen anything amazing happen ever. It goes from not very uniform to uniform, but that’s all.
After years, I found out about giving the dough a bit of folding, or balling it up, or whatever is fitting, and now it doesn’t take forever, doesn’t stick to my hands, and seems at least as good.
Have you seen anything wondrous happen from lengthy hand kneading?
Kneading time depends on hydration. For a 50% hydration dough you need just a few minutes. For 65% hydration you need about 5-10 minutes. But a lot of people these days make even higher hydration doughs and kneading time can easily be 40 minutes of non stop hard work.
If you want to learn the feel, start with 50% hydration.
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If it tears - it’s not ready. Even pasta dough at 38% hydration is very stretchy and elastic. Just knead longer.
Well, I don’t know what you’re doing wrong, but kneading definitely works.
Sticking is one of indicators of dough development during kneading. Once it stops sticking, you’re pretty much done. If you’re adding additional flour, it will stop sticking due to additional flour, not due to kneading.
During the minutes of sticking, do you just develop the strength that you keep going and ignore it? The sticking makes it so much more tiring.
Yeah, just doing my best to push through. But there’s a cheat code - hand mixer :)