Kneading Dough with a Mixer and the Dough Hook

Most dough can be kneaded in a stand mixer with either the dough hook or the paddle attachment. For making small amounts of dough—with 1 cup flour or less—the dough hook might not reach far enough down into the bowl, so it’s better to use the paddle attachment. The paddle attachment also works better for especially wet dough. A stand mixer is excellent for very loose dough that would be cumbersome to knead by hand. When kneading dough with the dough hook, the dough sometimes clings around the hook without touching the sides of the bowl so the dough just turns around without being kneaded. To avoid this, you can pull the dough off the hook with your hands every 30 seconds or so, or you can turn the mixer to medium or even to high speed so that the centrifugal force pulls the dough off the hook. You can tell the dough is being kneaded by the sound of it slapping against the mixer bowl. If you have a large-capacity heavy- duty mixer, you can leave it on medium or high speed for most of the kneading. (Be careful: when on medium or high speed, mixers tend to creep along surfaces and can fall over.) If the dough is stubborn or dry, pull it off the hook and cut it into pieces with scissors before continuing to knead.