There's more than one way to bake a loaf

[desperance]

Sourdough generally needs much, much longer to rise than a dough made with the standard brewer's yeast. It's not at all uncommon to knock the dough back several times during the first rise - my last loaf, my current preferred process, I gave the dough a five-minute knead and then knocked it back every hour on the hour for the next four hours, before I shaped it and set it to rise for baking.

Right now I am trying a whole nother method, where it starts out mixed but not kneaded at all, and then gets ten or fifteen seconds of kneading every ten minutes for the first half-hour, then on the half-hour, then on the hour.

For some people, I guess this would be intolerable. For me, at the moment, it's all but ideal. I work from home anyway, so being around for four hours is no burden; I'm working revisions, which calls for no great extended periods of concentration; I really, really need to take a lot of breaks from the computer just now, so being constantly called away to fidget with bread is nothing but a blessing to my body.

And it's a fascination to my mind. Bread without hard kneading? What is this about? Will it, y'know, work...?

Also, I knead need a breadmaking icon, if I'm going to go on talking about it. But I need more cooking-icons anyway, 'specially now that I no longer grow chillies. I must take more photos...