Mixing the Ingredients/Mix and Knead 1

When baking without the use of a bread machine, the mixing—the combining of liquid and dry ingredients—may be done by hand, using the dough hook of an electric mixer, or by a food processor. The bread machine has a slow clockwise rhythm that blends the dough properly, turning for about three minutes (if the blade was turning more vigorously at this point, flour would be flying up against the lid and over the sides onto the heating element). The yeast gets distributed and moistened during this mixing. The gluten in the flour begins to be moistened by the liquids, and all the ingredients become evenly distributed. The dough can look anywhere from batterlike to dry and crumbly at this point, depending on the recipe, and there may be lots of lumpy, unincorporated bits of flour in the corners of the pan; this is okay. In the center of the mass, around the blade, there will be the beginnings of a dough ball coming together. I often look in at the dough during this step and scrape down the sides if there is a lot of flour in the corners of the pan. The mixing and kneading mechanism of the machine is very carefully engineered. There seems to me to be no great difference in the texture or flavor of loaf-style breads made in the bread machine from breads made by other appliance-aided means. In bread machine baking, the initial knead, Knead 1, is more or less an extension of Mix. It is not until Knead 2 that the kneading blade begins to rotate very fast.