How an 'autolyse' kneads your dough for you 

Finally someone who actually explains autolyse, and doesn’t tell me it just does a bunch of magic and makes my bread amazing.

Adam really does everything to make cooking lazier and I love it

I have done MANY autolyses of different kinds. I agree with you, salt nor yeast makes a difference in practice. I simply mix everything and let it sit for 20-25 minutes and it always comes out magnificent

Can't wait until Adam make the dough season and bake itself

Adam, I would be really interested to hear your take on the differences between jam/jelly/preserves/conserves/marmalade/fruit sauce, etc., and a brief history of jam too. (Perhaps paired with a jam, scone, and clotted cream recipe?).

"Why I kneed my bowl, NOT my dough"

Hey, I started watching your videos last week because of two topics I was researching - baking steels and Neapolitan high hydration pizza. I'm a sourdough bread baker and I'm reading one of Prof. Calvel's books right now (the English translation of "The taste of bread"). So overmixing, overoxidation, overfermentation, are (all different) problems that I found more obvious in big bakeries - where the batch sizes are big, the mixers are big and there's a strict timeline. One is tempted to add more sourdough/yeast, use hotter water, develop the dough more fully inside the big mixer or do other things to quicken the maturing, but they all degrade the flavor and keeping quality of the bread while often contributing to its volume. Making hundreds of loaves requires different technology than mixing 1 kg of dough at home. It's totally fine if a home baker "takes shortcuts" and is happy with the results because bread is awesome! But one can't learn from the blog post on King Arthur's site or from youtube and to conclude that it will work equally great on the large scale and would give consistent high quality results. All of this to say, is that the autolyse does improve taste in my opinion, if you compare the gentle maturing you receive with this technique to working hot and fast. As for color, all wheat bread is rather white, but extreme white overoxidized dough has higher volume and less flavor that bread made in a gentler method. I love these discussions and could go on forever haha. Thanks, take care!

I don't even knead. After getting it together into something resembling a cohesive mass, I rest it, come back, fold it a few times, rest it again, come back, fold again...just do that a 3 or 4 times, ball it, and let it ferment. Consistently excellent results every time. It's even easier with high hydration doughs. I don't even use my KitchenAid mixer for pizza doughs anymore. It's too much work that way, lol.

I've been making heavy use of this alongside the cold ferment strategy to have "pizza dough" ALWAYS ready in the crisper for a few weeks now-- two big tupperware containers, just mix up a single pizza's worth of flour oil yeast sugar salt water, mix it up with the handle of a butterknife or something and pop it in the fridge for a few days. Couldn't be easier-- could be _better,_ but perfectly serviceable pretty good bread trumps GREAT bread that can take a dozen times more sweat in overall net "happiness" gain, nine times out of ten at least when easily distracted and slow-to-commit people like me are involved.

Thanks for not serving us a half-baked video! We really kneaded this tip! 🥖

Oh boy, can't wait for the promised no knead recipe from a few months ago now that Adam has found a way he likes to autolyse.

My mom has been doing this for my entire life. She mixes the dough up, gives it a very light knead, then puts it in a bowl with a towel over it to 'pre-rise' for about a half hour. Pretty sure she's never heard of autolyse, it's just how her mom and grandma did it!

This makes so much sense. My MIL makes amazing bread and she doesn't knead very long at all, but hers is the most amazing bread ever, and she let's it sit for about 20 minutes!

I've been baking sourdough bread at home, and the autolyse is almost essential when working with dough that is 70-80% hydration. Otherwise it will be unbearably sticky and unworkable.

In case you're wondering, your way of saying "lysis" isn't more faithful to the original Greek pronunciation - in Greek, it originally had a /y/ there, which is the ü sound in German, or the "ee" in English "peel" but with pursed lips. However, you do pronounce it the same way most English-speaking scientists pronounce it, so if there is such a thing as a "correct" way to say "lysis", you nailed it.

I really feel like Adam somehow manages to do being "lazy" in the most overachiever way

I make pizza dough for a pizzeria in Baltimore, MD. I’ve made dough for pastries and bread for about 7 years. How I use autolyse in pizza dough is to keep my dough silky. If you kneed to much the pizza dough becomes resistant to being stretched and will tear holes when stretched. The more autolyse you let happen, then less the dough gets “stressed out”. This is only for dough shapes that you do not want to hold it’s shape.

Are we just going to ignore the professor casually walking into work holding a baguette?

Can we appreciate that Adam actually used the shirt off his back for his auto-lyse metaphor.

I see Adam is going for the John Wick look

People who think that autolyse improved their dough might get that idea because they weren't properly kneading it without autolyse. The process simple allows to reach that ideal stage quicker and easier.

i have made many times with success is babish’s no knead bread. just bread flower, water, salt and yeast. leave it for a day and bake it and bam amazing fresh bread

When he brought out the shirt I was convinced he was about to launch into an incredibly smooth ad transition about a monthly subscription to shirts or something like that.

I've been using a 24 hour recipe lately, works really well. Salt, yeast, flour, water; barely mix at all. Let stand for 12 hours, it may still have dry regions. Fold it over itself a few times, let stand for another 12 hours, bake in cast iron with lid. I daresay it could be shortened by quite a few hours, but it's so much easier to plan if you start exactly one day in advance.

I have been baking bread for ages. I have made every mistake possible. I also have broke every rule of baking bread, And it still comes out fine. Here is the deal, Adam pretty much spelled it out too. The outcome of your bread mainly depends on your formula, bake time and temp. All other mistakes your bread will forgive you. I do the autolyce. It does help absorb flour and start gluten development. I have bloomed my yeast in salt water, used water from areas when they say you can make bread with and Have done blind tasting with using different methods and it always comes out good.

I'm sure you know there's demand for this already, but Mr. Ragusea, I want nothing more than a video series explaining to me all the properties of the holy Trinity of water, flour, and yeast. I'm tired of trying to understand and remember recipes that have decided *this is how you make this bread*. No, no more, I want to start with the bread/dough/noodle I want to end up with in my mind, and from my knowledge of the fundamentals of bread-making, understand the ingredients and processes that allow me to go from raw ingredients to finished pastry. Please, Adam, there's no book (as far as I can tell) that covers the process of going from dough to food. I will pay good money for something that teaches me how to do it myself.

I've actually been using autolysing because a whole wheat bread recipe advises it. My father needs low-sugar, low-carb recipes and whole wheat flour just infamously refuses to soften or even come together in an elastic dough without using some fancy baking tricks to make it act more like all-purpose flour.

I think you should do a video on the differences between pate fermentee, biga, poolish/flour brew, sour dough starter and maybe see if along with the auto lyse it improves the flavor, and the differences of where you'd add one of the above pre ferments to your dough e.g. poolish/flour brew before autolyse, and biga, sour starter, and pate fermentee after you've autolysed.

I owe a baker an apology... I'll return!! Love your work Adam, its helped me so much in my cooking.

Adam, you really need to make a video on gluten/seitan. It's delicious when cooked properly and quite versatile. It also ties in well with gluten formation and this video.

I can’t wait to use my autolyse to knead my dough!

When making really dry doughs, like that for ramen, this step is really a necessity, rather than an option. There's so little moisture that you have to get every advantage you can get just to get it to knead, and even then it's sometimes good to knead it with your feet.

I'm surprised that this wasn't figured out thousands of years ago, and been the default for breadmaking ever since. I do an overnight rise with all the ingredients included, then three or four stretch-and-folds over the course of a few hours, and that's it. Makes great bread with minimal effort.

Love this! I had a feeling that you didn't necessarily need to knead dough given my chemistry and biology knowledge. I am a biology major (concentraring in biochem tho) with a love for baking and cooking. I absolutely nerd out when I do both. I definitely want to read Buehler's book!

As somebody who doesn't like to knead, this advice is life-saving to me. Now I might never opt to buy pre-made pizza dough ever again. Thank you very much!

I learned much of this (minus the autolyse part and the in-depth explanation from Emily) from Alton Brown years ago. Sounds like you may be a Good Eats fan too!

The editing is massively impressive! The quality! The research! This channel never cease to impress me, loving the chemistry parts too!

that "nah" at the end saves me time to read that entire journal. Thanx Adam

Fantastic video. Thanks Adam.

One video taught me to fold the dough a few folds then put into a covered bowl for an hour. Do this 3 or 4 times. Sometimes the waiting is just as emotionally taxing as the kneading and rising.

Another outstanding tip I have picked up from this man. Well done in bringing this to the attention of the masses.

I really love this type of cooking videos of yours! Talking about the benefits or in general of one specific thing and then going very deep into how it chemically works. It really gives a deeper understanding of the process, probably completely unnecessary but the nerd in me absolutely love it:D

Great video Adam!

Died laughing watching the bread professor carry a baguette into work with him

Quality content as usual. I love these food science videos. Makes understand the subject semi-deeply so I can apply what I learned in different circumstances.

This type of content is why I LOVE your channel. Perfect for the food science nerds out here. Thank you so much

Good for you Adam.

Actually, "auto-lease" (IPA [ˈɔtoʊlis]) IS the right pronunciation, ESPECIALLY if you're going to use the Ancient Greek argument--the Ancient Greek word is λύσις, and upsilons in Ancient Greek were pronounced somewhere between an "ooh" and an "ee" (most often compared to a German ü), which eventually became a straight up "ee" by the emergence of modern Greek. Consider for example "gymnasium," which has the same upsilon situation in the Ancient Greek as our current word lysis (γυμνάσιον), and is also pronounced as "JEEM-nasium" not "JAIM-nasium." It's true that Ancient Greek was spoken for ~2500 years (more or less depending on how you define proto-Greek and modern Greek, its descendant) and its phonology changed extensively and varied by region in that time--however, NOWHERE do we have an attestation for an "ai" sound for the upsilon--that is a purely English botch-up of the Ancient Greek language. (We know for sure that it was a pure monophthongal IPA [u] in Proto-Greek and eventually became an IPA [i] by modern Greek, and the debates for that shift are varied, but absolutely no linguist would ever claim it was an [aɪ] at any point) You can claim you're pronouncing it with an "ai" because you're an American who speaks English, and therefore you're pronouncing this word the English way (consider our word "cycle" from the Ancient Greek word κύκλος, which you'll notice ALSO has the upsilon, but because of the Great Vowel Shift and other phonological pressures of the English language, has retained a similar pronunciation as yours of "lysis.") but the French are actually MORE correct than us on their pronunciation of "autolyse"--and you most certainly should not be using Ancient Greek to back up your pronunciation, because it actually supports the French phonology much more than yours. I don't mean to be rude, but as someone who has made classics her life's work, there is already so much misinformation about the ancient world; please do your research before making such claims. For my sources and further information, I suggest Sidney Allen's Vox Graeca or Stephen Colvin's A Brief History of Ancient Greek. I will note that I'm not a linguist by training; only a philologist, so I was required to the learn the basics of this information, but am not an expert by any means.

Excellent video. Thanks!

Thanks again Adam!

Thank you. Excellent tutorial.

Thanks for this.

For the first time I actually understand this process. Well done!

Thank you Adam for your in depth research and reviews for an engineer that is a technical cooking nerd! 🤓

Great and very useful video adam, thanks

This channel never ceases to amaze me, great work!

I've been a millwright building industrial bakeries for 30 years, the biggest places. I don't remember ever seeing any bakery use the autolyse. Most industrial bakeries use mixers in the 500 to 2000 pound of dough range (wonce moved a 3500), they are equiped with 25 to 100 hp electric motors. Those large mixers have no problem kneading the dough, most kneading that is done after the first rise is done as some sort of conveying system.

I just decided to bake today after a long hiatus. I said to myself, eh, I'll try this autolyse thing. Then RU-vid notifies me about this video. Talk about timing!

Awesome! I'm glad to get the 20 min time parameter and some tips on this all around. Great little bread insight video!

I really appreciate these explainers. Thank you!

Amazing! Thank you!

Superb presentation Mr Ragusea. You're really in your element in videos like this.

I'm a simple man. I see an opportunity to be lazier in the kitchen, I take it. Thank you Adam!

The best explanation ever, don't want to miss any portion of his teachings!!! Thank you, sir!!!

Thanks for the video, looking forward to more bread related content! Would love to hear your thoughts on health benefits of true sourdough vs long fermented instant yeast dough 👍🏻

Thank you...great informative presentation...great anologies

Thanks Adam.

I am so glad you explained this. I buy bread mostly because I don't have the energy to do a lot of kneading. This is a game changer. Thank you!

I've always had trouble kneading dough. I thought I was doing it wrong. Now I know what to do.

autolyse process was a question on my midterm test today. wish i had watched this yesterday

How to prepare dough cleverly. Sometimes I do like to just kneed my by dough simply because I want to do sth, but on busy or lazy days, this is amazong knowledge!

Found a recipe online for regular old home made bread. one step in the procedure was stir the stuff together and let it sit 10min. Now I know why. Think I'll try 20 next time. Thanks for all the great information!

This is just the video on bread dough that we kneaded. Cheers!

I am just used to such smooth ad transitions from Adam, I was instantly dissapointed that this was not that smooth. As if it is norm to have such good transitions. Nice job Adam !

Fascinating and educational video! I can't wait to try the autolyse with my next sourdough loaf.

this is a very impressive video full of the science behind gluten and autolyse

The back of my mind is imagining Adam putting bread dough in the oven, and then taking out the shirt instead.... (that he's wearing...)

Informative and entertaining as always

The thread metaphor was great

I used this method for a very sticky cinnamon bun dough and it helped immensely, spared myself 20 minutes of pain :) they also turned out to be the best batch of yeast dough I’ve ever made

Every Monday is a class I love Love You Adam ❤️

Very nice and informative, also covers other topics like overkneading and oxidation. Thanks a lot man, great work.

Love watching your videos! I learn something new with every one :)

another great video by the mariah carey christmas chord guy. happy holiday season!

Instructions unclear: dresser drawers now filled with flour paste, and my oven has been vomiting out t-shirts for the last 3 hours....

Interesting! I'd long ago - mainly out of laziness rather than from any knowledge of the topic - gotten in the habit of mixing most of the flour with water and yeast and letting it ferment for half an hour or so before adding oil and salt and kneading in the rest of the flour. I'll have to try the "add the yeast later" approach one of these days.

Deeply appreciate you doing the research. As a scientist, this will make my life so much easier since I now understand how autolyse works and now I can reasonably anticipate how the rest of my bread ingedients will interact. I can now rearrange my recipies for max flavor and efficiency!

I was at the culinary back in ‘94. We were autolysing dough in chef coppages class. Funny to think we were at the cutting edge. Crazy it’s been almost 30 years.

Cool,👍 a video about autolyse! Thanks

Yay! No more intensive kneading for breads! I have been leaving my dough for 10mins before kneading and found that it reaches the windowpane stage much faster. I am now going to leave it for 20mins.

Love the way you autolyse this topic into little molecules of understading

Man i don't even neccessarily wanna know about these stuffs but i adam's video has always been such a leisure time for me lol something about it is just so relaxing

Loving the "Good Eats" vibes of the string demo. 👍

I just bought things for making pizza dough and then you bless me with this video, gonna try this autolyse soon!

Nice chemistry refresher!

Re: the end of the video, I just wanted to say that King Arthur Flour's online resources are some of the best on the Internet.

Autolyse is one of the best techniques I have found when working with high hydration recipes. Less time in the stand mixer and much easier to work with otherwise difficult dough. I even do it for lower hydration recipes just to save time. I do it between 30 mun-45 min for strong flours and 20-30 minutes for weaker flours. I have hear autolyse does weaken the flour which is important to not over-autolyse.

i'd been adding yeast after the autolyse, and it was a pain.. very glad to know i can mix everything dry with same end result, plus i can cut elapsed time in half yayy

This is, to me, what made Adam's channel better than any other channel. He doesn't just give you a recipe and tells you "just do like this it's better". He's gonna tell you why he does something, why he doesn't do something, the pros, the cons, and let's you figure out what you want with the infos he gave you. Thanks to him I don't spend 20 min stirring risotto for no reason anymore, I make the best brownie I ever ate, and many more tips. I'm a regular home pizza maker. I'm 100% gonna try this and I have no doubt it's gonna come out as my new standard of making pizza. Thanks Adam.

I have made sourdough for the past 10 years and played around with it a lot. Adam is really hitting the mark, but I think it's only going to really land with people who have already worked through the basics. So much of this stuff is guided by the "vibe of the thing" and that is really hard to impart with videos like this.