Resting the dough gives the gluten structure a chance to loosen and unwind, and it will give you a better final product.
Next, shape the dough into a ball and let it rest, covered in plastic wrap or an inverted bowl, for about 10-15 minutes before proceeding. This will relax the gluten and the dough's elasticity, making it easier to roll out the dough and shape the knots.
The main reason for leaving dough to rest is to let the yeast do its job. While the bread is resting, the yeast will convert sugars and start producing carbon dioxide gas. You need this gas to create a light and airy bread. Without it the bread will be a lot denser.
If you don't let dough rise long enough then the bread will be dense, rubbery, and less flavorful. As the yeast ferments, it fills the dough with gas and gives the bread its airy texture. The flavors also come as byproducts of fermentation.
Cover the dough with a bowl and allow it to rest for 20 minutes—this is the autolyze—then continue kneading until the dough is smooth and elastic, 5 to 10 minutes. A stand mixer will take about 1 minute on low speed.
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.
Look for Smooth Dough
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 it holds its shape, then it's ready for the next step. After the second rise, however, a baker is looking for the dough to spring back at her slowly when she pokes it. The second proving has given the bread more elasticity, and made it harder to deflate the air.
Does Rising Bread Affect Its Texture? For a fluffy bread texture, the key is to let the bread rise long enough.
Bread recipes typically call for two rises: The first is the “bulk” rise when the dough rises in the bowl, while the second rise comes after the dough has been shaped, like when a sandwich dough proofs directly in the loaf pan.
Overkneaded dough will be tough and make tough, chewy bread. If you've kneaded by hand, you don't need to be too worried about overworked dough—you'll start to notice it getting difficult to manage. It takes a lot of elbow grease to knead bread dough; you'll likely tire yourself out before you can over-knead.
Can dough sit too long? If dough is left to rise for too long, it will cause issues with the taste and appearance of the bread. Excess fermentation occurring in either the first or second rise can lead to a sour, unpleasant taste if the dough gets left for a long time. Over-proofed loaves have a gummy or dense texture.
Tip 4- Use Warm Water to Make the Dough Soft
If you want the dough to be soft and easy to handle, never use cold water to knead the dough. Cold water doesn't make the dough soft and also makes it difficult to roll the chapattis. This is the reason why you need to use lukewarm water to knead the dough.
This rest allows the starches and the gluten to expand and fully absorb the water, which makes the dough easier to handle and can shorten the time needed to fully knead the dough. This is especially helpful in dough that is very sticky, like ciabatta.
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.
Simply put, you have to control the temperature of the bread. Allowing ample time for your bread dough to rise and the yeast to form will create the holes in the bread that give it a lighter texture. Letting your dough get puffy and grow before it goes into the oven is critical.
There's something magical about the bread you get at your local bakeries - they're always sooo soft and fluffy. Many of these breads, especially packaged ones, are made with a ton of chemical additives such as calcium propionate, amylase, and chlorine dioxide which help keep them soft, light, and fluffy for days.
Dense or heavy bread can be the result of not kneading the dough mix properly –out of many reasons out there. Some of the other potential reasons could be mixing the yeast & salt together or losing your patience while baking or even not creating enough tension in the finished loaf before baking the bread.
If the dough doesn't spring back at all, you've likely over-proofed the dough. When the dough rises too much before it gets baked, it will collapse, rather than rise, in the oven's heat, and the crumb will be uneven and ragged.
Yeast bread recipes typically require two stages of proofing, also known as rising. After the first rise, it's important to punch down the dough to prevent it from over-proofing. Overproofed bread is dense and unable to retain the gas bubbles necessary for the structure of the bread loaf.
As you knead the dough you are creating uniformity in the dough. You will feel it get more smooth and also more tough as you need. After kneading, when the dough bakes, this beautiful matrix of proteins that you created by kneading the dough will trap gas released from the yeast in the dough, helping the dough rise.
It's lumpy yet well-mixed (no dry spots of flour); it's a cohesive ball but not a smooth one; it sort of looks like the inside of a soft pillow. Next time you need to make a shaggy dough—for hot water crust, pita, shortcakes, pie! —you can use this photo (and also your hands and eyes!) as a reference.
Fully kneaded dough will hold its shape, look smooth, be slightly tacky when touched, and bounce back when pressed inward (via Kitchn). The Spruce Eats warns that if your bread is under-kneaded, it will spread flat out instead of rising, and may collapse in on itself.