@rumtscho- your answer about stretching and folding is just slightly incorrect- but in such a way as another answer isn't useful- I would rather you just edited yours.
The stretch and fold method has the same effect as normal kneading but the dough is handled differently.
With normal kneading the dough is turned, folded, and pressed with the hand- this is all but impossible with very wet doughs.
The technique therefore, changes to simply pulling the dough and folding it onto itself, avoiding contact with the hands as much as possible.
So your answer was about the result which is the same but you should add something about the technique which is definitely different.
OK bakers, do you actually make adjustment to your recipes based on humidity, hold out on some water or adding more water. Or do you alwys just go straight weight percentages and not worry about himidity levels?
that is what I always hear. I kind of think it is funny that something people say is such a science and an exact art, that everyone says, I go by look and feel.
@rfusca The problem I find is trying to teach people through recipes and not hands on. What is it supposed to look and feel like? How can one tell what adjustments need to be made? How can you really know when you got it right?
I think tasting gives a good idea of saltiness, amount of rising (doughs close to overrising have a faint sour aroma), starch content, and also, for enriched breads, fat content and development of the aromas (vanilla, lemon, etc.) But yes, it is not the same as in the finished bread.
@Sobachatina Good that you know it. Whenever I read Russian, I never know which word I already know and which not. I only recognize each with a different level of certainty.
@rfusca I got an email last night if I would be willing to meet in the middle with 3 classes instead of 5 for the price. I said I could if they supply an extra worker so I don't have to. and they would have to guarantee a class of 20 to make it work. Just got an email that they agreed.
@Sobachatina I can read Russian transliteration more or less. It is different from Bulgarian transliteration, but readable. I can't write it though. But if you want to, write it, instead of typing Cyrillic.
So I readjusted to Qwertz, and touch-type it with a decent speed.
@Sobachatina yes. In the letters, only the Y and Z are exchanged. But it also has umlaute to the right, where Qwerty has special characters. And all special characters are at places other than Qwerty.
Programming on Qwertz is a PITA, { is at AltGr+7, [ is at AltGr+8
@Sobachatina I have also tried to write text in Emacs on a Qwertz layout. Luckily, I have very long fingers.
So, I can manage to write Roman text on Qwertz, and even program on it (with a slight delay)
But the problem is Cyrillic.
I use a phonetic layout for it, the BDS is impossible to learn
And all the letters are so easy to type
I only have to remember where я, ш etc. are, but not too problematic
But the mean part is that the phonetic layout is Qwerty based, so all the special characters are where I don't expect them
When I try being nice to people and chat with them in Bulgarian using a Cyrillic writing instead of the ugly transliteration, they soon ask me to revert to transliteration, because I tend to end sentences with a - when I want to write a ?, or to use a = instead of a comma, or similar stuff.
I've been meaning to write my own phonetic layout with letters where I expect them and signs where I expect them, it is possible for Ubuntu, and I don't chat much from the work (Windows) PC.
But I am lazy, because there is this great transliterator for the browser, it captures normal key strokes and transliterates them (single letters or combinations), so I don't need it for surfing or emails, only for chat/IM.
@Sobachatina Hmm, that's another solution, maybe I should try it.
At least computers tend to understand Unicode by now, it used to be normal to write text in Windows-1251 and send it to somebody (or post it on the Internet) and the reader only saw "monkeyish", where each letter is rendered as a Latin-Extended character.
The normal kneading makes a small fold, which only gets a small part of the molecules in the dough travel, and they don't travel for a long time in one direction.
You do it very quickly, and repeat it hundreds of times, until the bread is developed.
In one big, long stretch, you get much more alignment per stretching movement.
But you make many less movements for the duration of a kneading phase
And each movement traps more air and distributes the air into even smaller pockets.
@rfusca My point is that stretching it farther is more effective and wetter doughs knead more effectively. You would see better results with either- but when doughs are wet enough you can only use the stretch and fold because you can't touch them.
