This sourdough recipe gives me a good sourdough loaf with machine kneading. It evolved from reading Emily Beuhler’s excellent book, Bread Science. Make sure your mixer can handle the heavy work though, before you try.
Method
3 cups (750 mL) bakers flour
3 tablespoons starter
350 mL filtered water
1 tsp salt
1 cup (250 mL) secondary flour (ie wholemeal or rye)
Mix the bakers flour, starter and water and leave to stand for at least 30 min. Tip the dough into a kitchen mixer with the dough hook attached, and begin mixing on a low setting. Add the salt. After 7 minutes add the secondary flour, then mix on the lowest speed for three minutes. Remove dough to a clean work surface and knead until the secondary flour is evenly incorporated. Put in a bowl, cover with cling film and leave to rise.
The first standing time allows the flour to hydrate and helps get a well behaved dough.
Kneading with a mixer is a big plus for me. 15 minutes of hand kneading is a very long time. I do understand the satisfaction of doing it by hand, and you get a good feel for the development of the dough, but if it’s work that a machine can do, why not use it? Domestic mixers have trouble with stiff dough, however, and that’s why I add the final cup of flour at the end. The dough develops well in the first kneading, the bakers flour carries the dough, and the the secondary flour gets the dough to a good consistency.
You can follow the dough’s development in the mixer. It goes from grainy to silky. I use the 2nd or 3rd mixing speed, so that the dough gets thrown off the hook, and I pause the mixer at around 3 minutes to cut the dough off the hook with a spatula, so that there’s none that stays at the top of the hook or inside the dough ball. At 7 min the dough becomes coherent, more interested in itself than the bowl.
The final mixing (lowest setting) is just to get the machine to incorporate the secondary flour for you. Careful, it can puff out of the bowl, especially rye flour which tends to be very fine.
A final hand mixing is necessary to get a smooth even dough, you will feel when it’s done. You don’t need any extra flour for this, and the dough should not stick to your hands or the surface.