Dough Recipe / / / / Hand or Machine ?????

[xfire]

Oven is now ready to cook.
I have looked at many dough recipes and there seems to be only slight variations from one to the next.

I would like to hear if there is a certain formula that works best the wood burning oven ?

Also is a mixer machine necessary or better to make the dough?
The only one I could find is the Kitchenaid brand that cost around $300.
If it can be done successfully by hand, I would not want to invest in the machine.

[Tscarborough]

As long as you use some method of forming gluten, it can be done by hand. I use time instead of kneading, it works well.

[RandyJ]

You don't need a mixer but they are nice to have. And they save a lot of labor. Also with the Kitchen Aid mixers you can all kinds of attachments for it to do things like make pasta, grind meat, make ice cream, whatever. I have the pasta extruder and pasta roller set for mine and love them very much. So if you are only going to mix a little dough every once in a while then no you don't need a mixer, but there is a lot more they can do.

Randy

[SableSprings]

Originally Posted by Tscarborough

As long as you use some method of forming gluten, it can be done by hand. I use time instead of kneading, it works well.

I also use pre-ferments and time instead of "big mixers" to bring my bread's gluten up to its full potential. My poor old Kitchen Aid hasn't been used for making bread for over two years. I only bake once per week but make 16-20 loaves for that baking day--all by hand mixing methods.

All my breads have a significant portion (of the dough) spend overnight at refrigerator temps which really helps in gluten development (and flavor). Very happy with my resulting loaf crumb & flavor. The biggest two issues I face is having big enough bowls to work/hold 10# to 12# of dough and then where/how to refrigerate them overnight. Coolers and ice work well in the summer.

Below is one of my baguettes showing its texture/crumb.

[Dino_Pizza]

If you check out posts 38-40 here:
http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/24/c...s-14478-4.html (Crust issues)
is a small discussion on using a kitchen aid vs hand mixing on pizza dough (and for me at least, totally applicable, actually an epiphany, for my bread making too).

1st: I LOVE my kitchen-aid. But after building my wfo, and using the KA for pizza dough and previously for bread, I started buying and reading Jeffrey Hamelmans, Peter Reinhart baking books AND reading the wisdom of people on this forum, I tried something different: I mixed my pizza dough by hand and let the rest period (called Autolyse in most cook books) do all the heavy work for creating the gluten and turning the dough silky and smooth.

I can't stress enough the revelation it was; I didn't have to hover over my KA with a rubber spatchula for 20 minutes, didn't have to keep pulling the bowl out to see if it needed more water or flour. Didn't have to clean the hook and bowl. But the real kicker was the superior dough that formed. It was (and still is, dozens of times in the last year of my pizza making) soft, supple perfect pizza dough made in 1 wide, stainless steel "salad" bowl.

I make a double batch of dough (8-10 240 gram dough balls) easily by hand. This got me started making all the breads I used to make in the KA mixer by hand too. It's really amazing what "rest" does to a dough. Also, mixing by hand forced me to make my doughs with a bit higher hydration (wet my hands often) that improved the crust texture and I could flour up my pizza and stretching peel more and not worry about drying the dough out.

Don't get me wrong: I love my KA mixer for making pasta and attaching the pasta roller and rolling out sheets for lasagna or into fettucini strands. I made some nice bread doughs in the past, but my 1st choice is mix pizza dough by hand because it's actually faster and the final product (for me) is better than with machine.

Like Sablesprings and Tscarborough says, I also let my pizza dough balls rise overnight and usually use sour-dough starter only or in addition to ADY and the long resting improves flavor and dough texture.

[texassourdough]

Nice crumb, Mike!

I like big rectangular food storage/dough tubs for large volumes of handmixed dough. I get mine at AceMart here in Texas. Not sure of a name in Oregon but any restaurant supply store should have them at very reasonable prices.

From a mixing standpoint I (like you, Dino, et al) rarely use a KA but simply mix the dough and use S&Fs to finish it to the desired development. Tubs are GREAT for that. (I must admit that I often use the KA when I am making small dough batches but I would certainly not rave over the quality. To get back to the original question, if I wanted to use a mixer (as some do) I would buy an SP5 from the folks at SFBI. IMO only fork and spiral mixers can match or sometimes exceed hand made dough! I don't consider the KA even close. The Bosch and Electrolux/Magic Mill MAY be close but I don't have direct experience and can't comment.