Autolyse

I was making some bagels earlier and it occurred to me that when the popular TV cooks bake bread, you never hear anyone mention autolyse.

An autolyse is super simple. When you are mixing up the bread, you add all the flour and water in the recipe to the mixer. Once it is just incorporated: stop the mixer, and wrap it with some plastic wrap. That's it. You don't even need to remove the dough hook.










































Once the time is up, add the rest of the ingredients and mix in. Boom! done.

You will find your total time of mixing the dough is reduced. So if you are controlling the temp of the dough, no need to add extra heat from friction. And the chance of overworked dough is lessened. As well, I think the texture of the dough is improved by this progress.

So the next time you are making bread dough, think WWRD? He would autolyse that bad boy is what he'd do.