On 11/25/2019 at 4:23 AM, Duvel said:
In my experience time beats mechanical manipulation. Nowadays, I briefly mix my dough, do some stretch & folds with time inbetween (e.g. 30 min apart) and some ling cold rise in the fridge. None of my initial kitchen machine doughs ever had the strenghs of the batches I produce now by hand ...
@Duvel, I have to disagree with you on this. Or at least tell you that my experience is different. For years, (20) I used a Magic Mill (same as the Ankarsrum) do do all my mixing.
I only started to use the stretch and fold method in 2014. I went back and looked at the albums of the breads I made over the years from when I first started to take photos, 2004 to 2013 and I don't see much difference
in them.
The crumb and the shine are pretty much the same.
Some examples.
August 2013
2007
My first sourdough August 2007
2010
I actually enjoy the process of making the dough by hand. BUT, I already
know that there will come a point when my hands aren't going to like this method and when that happens
I'm happy to know that I can go back to using the Magic Mill and still be happy with my breads.
