What does it take to overmix bread dough?
Since my channel is mainly focused on hand-kneading I just had to try and do it with my hands first. The dough was kneaded for 1 hour. Let’s just say that the dough felt better than I did.
Yes, it warmed up a lot because of the long kneading process done with my warm hands and on my wooden table, but other than that it felt fine. It had lost about 50 grams of mass between sticking to my hands and evaporation. It became stiffer as the hydration got lower.
The bread came out just fine.
My second test involved the same dough which I mixed with my mixer for 1 hour. As you saw in the video the temperature pretty much increased at the same rate as when hand kneaded. This was quite the revelation for me since I had been warning people to be careful when using a mixer because I for some reason assumed that it warmed up the dough quicker than my hands do.
The bread was great in the end, but I was not satisfied. I needed to destroy a bread dough!
Next up I thought I would make a high hydration dough using the autolyse method. Autolyse weakens gluten and should make a dough more prone to breaking down when mixed too long. Again, no luck. Yes, it kind of looked paler and it became a little sticker, but it still made a great loaf of bread in the end.
Finally, I though I needed to try a different flour, so I made a 100% whole wheat dough.
This time I managed to destroy it. It took around 30 minutes on a speed that was higher than I would normally suggest. The dough became loose, and sticky and the gluten was clearly broken down. It tore easily and did not keep its shape.
