Most recipes that require How To Knead Dough Using A Food Processor. making a dough will suggest you use a stand mixer to knead the dough. But what if you don’t own a dough mixture?
If you happen to not own a stand mixer, you can always go for food processors. Food processors are not only a good alternative to kneading dough but can knead the dough much quicker than stand mixers.
We have outlined below how you can knead dough using a food processor.
Kneading Dough Using A Food Processor
Which Blade To Use?
Most food processor brands these days include a plastic dough blade in the packaging. Sadly, these blunt, short-armed dough blades are of little to no use since the dough tends to stick to the plastic surface, dragging the dough with the blade itself. In worst-case scenarios, the dough can end up sticking to the sidewall of the food processor, out of reach of the short plastic blades.
Metal blades are by far the better tool for kneading dough. The sharp metal cuts through the dough with ease, making dough-kneading not only less annoying but also much quicker!
Avoid Using Warm Water
Yeast in the bread can be killed if you use a higher than optimal temperature, leading to quicker fermentation of the dough.
Since the blades in food processors rotate with very high frequencies, a longer processing time can lead to overheating the dough, which further leads to killing yeast in the dough. To avoid such a problem, use cool water instead of warm water. The recommended temperature of the dough after processing should be somewhere between 70 and 75 degrees.
How Long Does It Take to Knead Dough Using a Food Processor?
As we have earlier mentioned, blades in a food processor rotate at very high frequencies (about 10 times fast than Stand Mixers). This means food processors can knead your dough about 10 times quicker than stand mixers. According to our observations, a batch of dough that would require 10 minutes to knead will be ready in about 70 seconds on a food processor.
When Do We Know That Our Dough is ready?
A perfectly kneaded dough is one that has a silky smooth texture, looks somewhat shiny, and when pulled, the dough should be elastic- very stretchy but also bounces back into place once released.
How Much Dough Can We Knead at Once?
Although food processors come in various sizes, the standard and the most popular sizes usually have a 10 or 12 cup capacity. For a standard-sized food processor, you can (at most) make a 1.5-pound dough per batch. For reference, a 1.5-pound dough is how much dough you could make with around 3 cups of flour.
If you are baking for a large number of people, you must knead the dough in turns- one batch at a time. Once you have done kneading all your batches, you can then combine the dough from each batch by using your hands.
How to Make the Perfect Dough Every Time!
Once you have mixed your dry ingredients in a bowl, transfer the dry mixture into your food processor. If you think you should mix the dry ingredients better before turning them into a dough, you can briefly have it mixed with your processor turned on. With the blades running, pour cool water through the feed tube. This will turn your dry mixture into a dough.
If you think the dough looks too sticky, add a tablespoon or two of flour. If, on the other hand, the dough looks crumbly, know that you have added too little water, so add a little more water through the feed tube with the machine running.
You will have prepared the perfect dough when, after about a minute of processing, the dough forms a smooth, shiny-looking dough ball.
