Kneading – by hand or machine, and when to stop
How long to knead by machine and by hand, how the dough feels when it's done, and why dough overworked in a fast mixer turns grey and never quite recovers.
Quick answer: by hand it takes 10–15 minutes, in a spiral mixer 6–10 minutes on low speed. You are done when the dough passes the windowpane test – not after a set time on the clock. Dough overworked in a mixer that runs too fast gets warm, grey and loses its ability to recover.
The windowpane test
Take a piece of dough and gently stretch it between your fingers. If it can go thin enough to let light through without tearing, the gluten network is developed enough. If it rips into ragged flaps before it gets thin, it needs more kneading – or it may simply need to rest (see autolyse, which does a large part of the work for free).
Machine versus hand
A spiral mixer builds gluten faster but also generates heat through friction – run it too long at high speed and the dough gets too warm for its fermentation time (see dough temperature). By hand it is almost impossible to overwork the dough, because you feel the resistance straight away. Neapolitan dough, by the way, should never be kneaded to ”fully developed” like a brioche dough – a little roughness in the structure gives the looser, more open crumb typical of the style.
Read on about what is actually being built in the dough in the gluten guide, how the full recipe looks in Neapolitan pizza dough, and what to do if the dough has already torn in dough tears.
