Upon first mixing, your dough will look like a lumpy mess of flours. As you knead it, it will gradually smooth out. By the time your dough is fully kneaded, it should be smooth and tacky to touch.
If the dough doesn't spring back when pressed with a finger, or tears when you pull it, it needs more kneading. If it springs back immediately when lightly pressed, and doesn't tear when you pull it, it's been kneaded enough and is ready to rise.
Soft, elastic dough should hold a finger imprint too, but it should take slightly longer for the imprint to fade. Soft dough is easier to stretch, and feels softer than stiff dough but still keeps its shape. Sticky dough feels wet; it's easy to pull into taffy-like strands with your fingers.
Stickiness is related to the hydration in your dough, no more and no less. A focaccia dough is going to be very sticky, and it is meant to be. Unless you knead with oil (a valid technique for sticky doughs) you will be cleaning dough off your hands, and a lot of it.
Soft dough is smooth, elastic, and slightly tacky. It's similar in smoothness and elasticity to the moderately soft dough image, though slightly sticky to the touch.
Bread Loaves made with over-kneaded dough commonly end up with a hard crust and dry interior. Often upon cutting, slices will crumble. If your perfect bread loaf turns into a crumbly mess, don't worry. The overworked dough will work great when used as croutons or breadcrumbs.
Stretch a section of dough between your fingers. If the dough tears, it needs to be kneaded more. If it stretches without tearing (making a windowpane of sorts), your dough is ready. Once you've determined that your dough has been kneaded enough, it's time to allow it to rest.
Smooth Dough – The dough will start out looking like a shaggy, lumpy mass and will gradually smooth out as you knead. By the time you finish, it should be completely smooth and slightly tacky to the touch.
Your dough can become sticky when you add too much water or the flour isn't suitable for the type of dough you are making. Over proofing or fermenting the dough can also result in the gluten structure weakening causing sticky dough.
Bread dough should be sticky and wet when you begin kneading it. I encourage everyone in my classes to embrace the stickiness! When water is first added to flour, the flour takes a while to fully absorb it all, making that dough even more sticky.
On a practical level, it takes up to 25 minutes—and some well-developed forearm muscles—to knead dough by hand, and just about 8 minutes to knead in the stand mixer with the dough hook. However, if you do not own a stand mixer, you can still mix dough by hand and make a good loaf of bread from most doughs.
How to tell the difference between “sticky” and “tacky” when it comes to dough: The easiest way is to press your hand onto the dough and then lift it up. If the dough pulls up with your hand and then releases (so your hand comes away clean), the dough is tacky. If you end up with dough stuck to your hand, it's sticky.
Different millers have different gluten levels in their flour, and if a different type of flour is used, the water baker's % will likely change. For example, most dry dough such as bagels and pretzels are 50-57 baker's % water, while most bread is 58-65 baker's % water.
As a guide, for a kitchen where the temperature is 20C and you added yeast at 1% of the flour weight (eg 5g dried yeast in 500g flour), you should still leave your dough to rise for around an hour and a half to two hours after kneading it.
If your kitchen and/or counter where you knead the dough is cool, the dough will cool down also (even if you used warm water to make it). If your dough is kept at around 80°F, it should take between 1 and 1½ hours to rise double in volume.
If the bread dough is over-kneaded, it will not rise in the oven because the stiff gluten prevents the gasses from inflating it.
High Water Content
Thus, adding more water than needed will result in a sticky dough. In addition, a high-hydration dough can be tricky to handle as it will stick to everything. In general, higher hydration doughs have great crumb and flavor. Learning how to handle stickier dough is ideal to make a great loaf.
Dough doesn't become sticky during the rise. It was probably sticky when you put it in the bowl or proving drawer. To avoid sticky dough, add water in drip by drip during the kneading process. Stop when the dough is soft and springy even if you have water left over.
Over-proofing happens when dough has proofed too long and the air bubbles have popped. You'll know your dough is over-proofed if, when poked, it never springs back. To rescue over-proofed dough, press down on the dough to remove the gas, then reshape and reproof. (This method won't work for sourdough bread.)
Kneading your dough develops the gluten, which in return, forms a more reliable gluten network that accelerates the rate of the yeast fermentation. The structure of gluten plays a massive part in how your bread is formed and the gas production it creates is what develops the air pockets in bread, allowing it to rise.
These gases get trapped inside the dough buy the mesh the gluten makes. This is what causes your bread to be airy and fluffy. This mesh is formed by kneading the dough. If you do not knead a dough enough you do not give your bread a chance as the gluten did not have enough time to build that mesh.
Over-kneading has a tendency to result in chewy bread. Here's how to tell if you've kneaded enough. Another possibility—you used bread flour when all-purpose flour would do. If a recipe with bread flour turned out chewier than you like, try it with all-purpose and knead only as much as the recipe directs.
Kneading the dough slowly unfolds the entangled network and aligns the long gluten strings in a stretchy, layered web. A pinch of salt helps as well because it neutralizes electrically charged parts of the gluten, allowing them to better slide along one another.
Underproofed dough is dense and has not increased in volume. This will result in a dense bread with a very tight crumb (holes are very close together) that doesn't have the pillowy texture when you take a bite. The flavor will also be underdeveloped.