Kneading

Kneading is a baking process that mixes bread dough ingredients and strengthens the dough, shortening baking times by forming the gluten structural protein complex and working air into the dough. As flour and water combine, the wheat proteins gliadin and glutenin expand into gluten strands, and kneading warms and stretches those strands into an elastic dough able to hold the gas pockets a leavening agent produces; without that gluten development, the loaf collapses into a heavy, dense result. It can be done by hand, with a stand mixer's dough hook, or with a bread machine, and it can also be replaced by an extended fermentation of over twelve hours in a wet, low-yeast dough, the method behind so-called no-knead bread.