Do you Need to Knead?

If you watch any cookery programmes in which they demonstrate the making of bread, the trend over the last few years has been to find more and more extreme ways of kneading to stretch the gluten in the flour. It's almost got to the stage of showing bakers stretching a kilogramme or more of dough so much that it covers an entire table or bench. You MUST do that to allow the gluten to stretch and to create the perfect crumb they say.

Normally, I comply with the above but yesterday I was in a bit of a hurry to make some bread buns so I put all of the ingredients in the bowl but simply mixed it, thoroughly I have to say, with a knife: slice and fold, slice and fold. It did NOT look like my normal silky smooth dough but I put cling film over the bowl and left it to prove. Then I knocked it down and shaped it into buns and left it to prove again.

Cut to the chase: I was delighted by the result: the buns look rustic AND the crumb is delightful. Really, it's more open and the buns are a little bit crumbly. I will try a loaf using this method next time and see how that copes.

DW