About air pockets

Having many and large air pockets is one of the signs for good bread making. For a long time my air pockets are mostly small, occasionally medium. Truth to be told that I also refused to use a machine for a long time, refused to recognize the importance of gluten development and the windowpane test.

If I had thought hard enough, I would have realized long ago that big air pockets need strong protein structure to hold. That strong protein structure comes from proper gluten development and one of the easiest way to test is the windowpane test. So you see, it never hurts to be scientific in life.

That's why I got a Bosch hand mixer with dough hooks. I am still resisting the stand mixer which takes too much of my precious storage space. With my new Bosch in hand, I witnessed three levels of gluten development as helpfully demonstrated by these three photos, first time in my life! Of course, retaining large air pockets in the final baked product needs more than just sufficient gluten development. There are still many steps between kneading and baking which could degas the dough. Shaping is one key step which I still need to work on. How to create sufficient steam to "bloom" the bubbles in the oven is not easy either. Even with my amateurish bread baking skill, I managed to produce air pockets of this size.

Can this be done purely with hands? Of course, there are many people who are doing that. I just thought that having some help from the machine is not a bad thing to maintain bread baking manageable to me.