cooking Cooking, also known as cookery or professionally as the culinary arts, is the art, science and craft of using heat to make food more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or Food safety, safe. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from ...

(and more specifically baking), kneading is a process in the making of

bread Bread is a baked food product made from water, flour, and often yeast. It is a staple food across the world, particularly in Europe and the Middle East. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cu ...

dough Dough is a malleable, sometimes elastic paste made from flour (which itself is made from grains or from leguminous or chestnut crops). Dough is typically made by mixing flour with a small amount of water or other liquid and sometimes includes ...

, used to mix the ingredients and add strength to the final product. It allows the process of baking to be shortened by developing the gluten more quickly than it would develop in the absence of kneading. Kneading's importance lies in the mixing of

flour Flour is a powder made by Mill (grinding), grinding raw grains, List of root vegetables, roots, beans, Nut (fruit), nuts, or seeds. Flours are used to make many different foods. Cereal flour, particularly wheat flour, is the main ingredie ...

with water; when these two ingredients are combined and kneaded, the gliadin and glutenin proteins in the flour expand and form strands of gluten, which gives bread its texture. (To aid gluten production, many recipes use bread flour, which is higher in protein than all-purpose flour.) The kneading process warms and stretches these gluten strands, eventually creating a springy and elastic dough. If bread dough does not develop these gluten strands, it will not be able to hold the tiny pockets of gas (

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

) created by the leavening agent (such as

yeast Yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom (biology), kingdom. The first yeast originated hundreds of millions of years ago, and at least 1,500 species are currently recognized. They are est ...

or baking powder), and will collapse, leaving a heavy and dense loaf. Kneading can be performed by hand (the traditional way), with a mixer equipped with a dough hook, or with a bread machine. In hand kneading, the dough is put on a floured surface, pressed and stretched with the heel of the hand, folded over, and rotated through 90° repeatedly. This process continues until the dough is elastic and smooth. The dough can then be allowed to rise or " prove". Similar to kneading is knocking back or punching down, which is done to the dough after proving. The dough is punched once or twice, after which it is kneaded gently for a short time. The aim of this is to remove any large gas pockets which have formed in the dough, create an even texture in the bread, and redistribute the nutrients for the yeast, thus allowing

fermentation Fermentation is a type of anaerobic metabolism which harnesses the redox potential of the reactants to make adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and organic end products. Organic molecules, such as glucose or other sugars, are catabolized and reduce ...

to continue. The dough can then be proofed a second time. Another method of knocking back (also known as "folding") is to gently stretch and pat out the proved dough before folding the sides in towards the centre. In bread baking, kneading can be substituted by allowing a relatively wet, low-yeast dough to ferment for more than 12 hours, which allows the gluten to develop in the absence of kneading, before shaping, allowing to rise, and baking; this method is referred to as no-knead bread.

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Short video of kneading machine in a bakery.
{{Bread Baking Food preparation techniques Articles containing video clips Culinary terminology

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