UK baker Dan Lepard maintains that when yeast, flour and water are combined, the resultant dough will rise, regardless of whether it’s kneaded or not. This process is known as autolysing.
I decided to test this theory out on a batch of pizza dough we made yesterday.
Into a large mixing bowl went my usual ingredients:
- 500g bakers flour
- 10g dried yeast
- 7g fine sea salt
- 320g water
- 50g extra virgin olive oil
I squelched these together until all the dry ingredients were moistened…
The mixed but unkneaded dough was left in the mixing bowl, covered with cling film…
Here it is after an hour…
…and at the two hour mark…
I scraped the risen dough onto the bench…
…and gave it ten folds, no more, which was enough to turn it into this…
The dough was divided into four, shaped into balls and rested for a further half hour before shaping and baking.
We made four man’oushe – Small Man’s favourite – and the delicious pizzas came out of the oven with large air pockets, a sign that the yeast was active and doing its job.
The whole process took longer than usual (I allowed the dough to bulk prove for two hours, whereas I would normally leave it for less than one), but the end results were no different to our regular pizzas.
Is it necessary to knead dough? In this case, it would appear not!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Looks great Celia. Dan’s technique is very forgiving and really does suggest that kneading is not that necessary. Great for lazy bakers like myself who probably wouldn’t bake bread if I had to knead for 10 minutes solidly!
Thanks C! It really did surprise me how well it worked – the end dough wasn’t lumpy or mottley at all. Girl, you are hardly a lazy baker! ;-)
But I LIKE to knead the dough. It helps me work out my ya-yas! Kneading is good therapy, but it is good to know that the yeast does its job either way. :)
Heidi, yes, I like kneading dough as well, and I do think the whole process is a bit quicker if you do knead. But the other advantage here is that you don’t have to clean up the bench afterwards! hehe..
Whoopee Celia, you’ve made my day. Would be great to make our own pizza, but limited bench space in my kitchen makes kneading rather difficult. As you know my rye sourdough requires no kneading and is fantastic, but I didn’t think it would work well on ordinary wheat flour. Will have to look into this folding method that you and Joanna are always talking about.
Oh, I’m happy to hear that, Choc! :) Re the folding, all I did was flatten out the dough and fold it in half, then give it a quarter turn and did the same thing again. I think a 10 second knead in the mixing bowl would have achieved the same thing!
Celia I hardly ever knead anymore. Thats what I love, love, love about my sourdough I never knead it. I love folds!
I still have to try those man’oushe’s. (Apparently they sell some good ones near Harkola.)
Brydie, the man’oushe is really easy to make – we bought a bag of za’atar from the markets. The za’atar they have at Harkola is quite citrussy, we tend to prefer the one that comes from Jordan. It’s really lovely with sliced tomatoes!
Preaching to the converted here ;) Lovely post Celia!
Haha…yes, I know, thanks, Jo! I know this isn’t quite Dan’s method, but his recent comments about how dough would rise with absolutely no handling inspired me to try this – normally I would at least do short kneads during the first rise…
I have been a big fan of the no-knead bread method for ages, but I hadn’t tried it with pizza dough – don’t know why I didn’t think of it.
A great trick to teach the lazy, but pizza addicted, teenagers I think!
I have a couple of those myself, A. I really should get them making their own..hehe
Sounds like a time-saver. I’ll have to try it!
Well done on experimenting with a “no-knead necessary” dough. Hmm, must admit, I would be tempted to knead it :-D – old habits I guess.
:-) Mandy
I’m in the like to knead camp myself. There is something satisfying about the rhythmic thumping that is theraputic. But this would be great for someone with arthritis or an injury. Great post!
Does folding work better than kneading? I knead my rye bread for 15-20 minutes. Could I fold it and get the same result in less time? Just curious, first time I hear of folding dough instead of kneading.
Pizza – kneadless but never needless!
Mandy, Chef, I quite like kneading too – I guess I was more just experimenting to see what would actually happen. And the dough really was fine for pizza with minimal handling. As you say, Chef, it’s good to know for anyone who finds kneading difficult.
Manuela, the original Dan Lepard instructions in his book The Handmade Loaf involved lots of very short kneads with lots of rest time in between – a short knead of 10 seconds, followed by a 10 minute rest, followed by another knead etc. After the bread started to rise a bit, you could fold it like bakers do for pastry – flatten out the dough a bit and fold a third from each side into the middle, then do the same again for the other sides. There are some photos on this website:
http://artisanbreadbaking.com/techniques/folding
I think the basic thing though is that the dough seems to rise over a longer time with resting as much as it would over a shorter time with kneading. Which means, dear Cosmo, that the need to knead is, I guess, determined by the need for speed. ;-)
Hehe I have to say that kneading dough is the thing that used to stand between me and decent bread. Then I got the KA and all was well after that (my arms have no strength apparently). But I never did try pizza dough using the no knead method!
I have a Kenwood, and it just doesn’t seem to manage kneading dough!
Celia, kneaded or not this looks like a very reliable pizza dough recipe – I’ll bookmark this for a try once I get my oven back! I like a thin pizza, how thin can you make these?
Sarah, if we let the dough have a really decent second rise, we find we can get the pizzas very thin indeed – even thinner than the ones above. They go quite crispy as well!
I’m a kneader. But there is always room for conversion. Ha Ha. I’ve been a lurker on your site for a while. Thought I would pop in and tell you how much I enjoy it. There is something about ausie blogs that I love. Great site. B
Beth, thanks so much for popping in to say hi! :)
I always thought that part of the purpose of kneading was to increase the gluten and make the dough more “strong” though I have no idea of the chemistry really. If a flour was high gluten anyway to start with then the idea of kneading it makes not much sense. Maybe kneading is actually a hangover from times when only low grade cake flour was available and it needed to be kneaded (you’ll like that wording I know!) in order to be suitable for bread.
Now you see, Frances, I always thought the same thing, so this was a real eye-opener for me too! But maybe it also has to do with managing the timing of the dough – I do think it rises faster when kneaded…
Love Zaatar but kneadless dough most certainly makes it alot easier. I have to try this for sure. Fab post and love all the photos.
Maunika, thanks for stopping by! I adore za’atar, especially with tomatoes! :)
Very interesting! I remember making the semolina buns – the dough only had a couple of short kneads and they still rose well. It’s so great to have another way to do things and I like the idea of leaving my dough on the bench to ‘autolyse’!! :)
Chris, I barely knead at all anymore. Last night I made a sourdough before bed – mixed, left to rest for 15 minutes, then kneaded for less than 30 seconds. Dumped the whole lot in a big plastic container, and it quadrupled in size overnight, ready for shaping in the morning! Too easy! :)
I make knead-less bread all the time. It’s on my blog somewhere under the cooking and food categories. Love the ease!
[…] me but more on whether the bread would rise and have enough air pockets. When I 1st read about kneadless pizza from Celia, I was filled with hope and dreamt about making a kneadless bread. After successfully making easy […]