Stretch and folds instead of kneading
No kneading today. I know that unseats people, because everyone's bread memory involves someone at a counter beating dough for ten minutes like it owed them money. We are not doing that.
Sourdough doesn't need that kind of labor. It needs time, and a handful of gentle folds along the way to build strength. That's the list. Your dough is wetter than regular bread dough anyway, so kneading it the traditional way is mostly a mess that buys you nothing.
What a stretch and fold actually is
Wet hand, or wet-ish. Reach down one side of the dough in the bowl, pull it up gently, and fold it over onto itself. Turn the bowl a quarter turn. Repeat. Four folds, one per side, and that round is finished.
Ten, maybe fifteen seconds of actual work.
You're not compressing the dough or punching anything out of it. You're giving the gluten something to grab so it organizes itself. Early on the dough feels slack and loose, like it has no intention of holding together at all. By the third or fourth round it feels different in the hand — tighter, pushing back a little. That's the strength building. You'll feel it before you can explain it.
The schedule
Four rounds of folds, roughly thirty minutes apart, over the first two hours of bulk fermentation. So: fold, wait thirty, fold, wait thirty, fold, wait thirty, fold. After that I leave it to finish rising on its own.
You don't have to be precise about the thirty minutes. Twenty-five, forty, whatever the day allows. The folds don't run on a timer; they just need to happen a few times while the dough's still young.
Cover the bowl between rounds. The air up here is dry — genuinely dry, especially in winter — and uncovered dough skins over on top. You get a dry film that won't fold in cleanly and tears instead. A shower cap, a damp towel, a lid, whatever's around. Just don't leave it open to the room.
Why this instead of kneading
I'll put it plainly: I prefer folds because they let me walk away. Kneading is ten minutes standing at the counter. Folds are fifteen seconds, four times, across two hours, and in between you go live your life. That's a preference, but it's most of why I bake bread with three kids and a husband and a calling that keeps me on the phone a lot.
It also happens to be less physically demanding, which matters if your hands or wrists don't care for kneading. Nobody needs to wrestle this dough into shape.
An aside, because it crosses my mind every single time I do folds — this is more or less why I got hooked on sourdough to begin with. It isn't a thing you rush through and finish. You check in, do a little, leave it, check in again. Not unlike keeping notes on a family line. You don't solve it in one sitting. You show up a few times and let it do its thing in between.
What it should feel like when you're done
After the fourth fold, the dough should feel noticeably tighter than at the start. It should hold its shape a little when you fold it, rather than slumping back flat. If it's still totally slack and puddly after four rounds, that's it telling you the flour's low protein, or the dough's on the wetter side, or it simply wants one more round. Fine. Give it a fifth.
If it feels tight and springs back hard when you poke it, you're in good shape and can leave it alone the rest of the bulk rise.
As it happens, this is about the stage where Elsie wanders into the kitchen, sees my hand in the bowl, and asks whether Herb is hungry. Herb is the starter — that's a whole other lesson — but she's decided the dough itself is also sort of Herb's business, and I don't correct her. She isn't wrong, really. It's all downstream of the same jar.
A caution, small one
Wet your hand before every fold, or the dough sticks to your fingers and you end up fighting it and tearing the surface instead of folding it smooth. Two seconds at the sink. Skip it once and you'll remember why I said it.
Before next time
Try the four-fold rhythm on your next batch and pay attention to how the dough feels at round one versus round four — that comparison is the lesson, more than anything I can tell you here.
- J