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Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 15. July 3 1978

Bread Making Part II — When you Knead to...

Bread Making Part II

When you Knead to....

End of exams, cold winter nights, no jobs... what better time to have a go at breadmaking. As with most human activities there is no substitute to learning from someone who knows how. No doubt you will have failures; be of good cheer, All good breadmakers do, but the successes make it worthwhile. (I am one of the few who has managed to turn bread into stones!) Bread-making is not economical unless you have a deep freeze and can bulk buy and bake. Finally, bread-making need not be time-consuming. If you juggle quantities of yeast you can leave dough to rise overnight or throughout the day.

There are two major difficulties that I encountered with breadmaking. The first of these, dough consistency, can be overcome by following this recipe exactly. Once you know the right consistency you can play around with a variety of flours and quantities of liquid. The second difficulty is kneading. This is basically a controlled assault on the dough which mixes ingredients and helps develop gluten which binds the bread together. Most experienced breadmakers use the palm of one hand to push the dough down while turning the bulk of the dough in one direction with the other hand. The key to kneading is time - white flour dough must be kneaded for at least 15 minutes; brown flour dough for longer.