Kneading
Kneading is the process of beating up your dough until it’s ready for proving (rising). It’s a key component of bread making and will set up the texture of your bread. By kneading you will develop the gluten strands to create an elastic dough that will allow room for the yeast to expand. Some of you will have a machine for this, dough mixers being notoriously difficult contraptions to travel with, I tend to knead my dough by hand. There are no hard and fast rules on kneading, as long as you vigorously work the dough for a good 10 minutes (I’d suggest watching a few videos on kneading and finding a technique that suits you). Wetter dough makes for softer bread, so the dough itself needs to be as sticky as you can tolerate it while kneading. Don’t flour the surface, your dough will absorb any flour you put down and may become too dry. Instead, invest in a dough scraper (alternatively a plastering trowel from your local hardware store) to retrieve any errant dough from the work surface.
Rising
In my humble opinion rising is an exact science. The rise time will be different depending on your location, here, as it is hot and humid, the rise time is extremely short (25 minutes where I am, but it can take several hours depending on the climate). Your first few batches you’re going to have to watch like a hawk. If you leave it too long it will change the structure of your bread. If you have over proved (risen), you will notice that the cling film will stick and pull open to the dough revealing the bubble structure inside. This is not the end of the world, you can still bake the bread, it just won’t be as good (or alternatively, scrap the bread idea and make pizza). The second rise is usually shorter than the first, but the rules are the same. Once you have baked a few loaves, you should have a good idea of the rising times for the climate you live in.
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