Homemade Bread with a Bread Kneader



Home made bread is a luxury that is seen less and less as time goes on. This is a sad fact due to a large number of factors. The largest factor in the disappearance of home made bread is the amount of time and energy needed to make home made bread. There is the time needed to allow the bread to rise, the time and energy needed to knead the bread and the time needed to bake the bread. Finding ways to eliminate the time and effort needed to create fresh bread has been the challenge of the baking industry and bakers around the world since the inception of bread. The bread kneader has been one such place to start cutting time and energy.



Before the industrial revolution, the world had to do much of their work by hand. The women working in the kitchens would often have to do all of the work in the kitchen from killing the animals to kneading the bread. The larger kitchen would often hire a single person to handle all of the kneading for bread. This person, usually a child of a kitchen worker would be known as a bread kneader because that is all that he would be assigned to do. There were many jobs like this in ancient kitchens including the spit turner and the blower, people with specialized jobs that helped the kitchen to function efficiently. This was especially true for those cultures that used a lot of bread, including England and America.

Bread kneading is vital to the bread making system. If the bread is not kneaded, the air in the bread will lead to pockets and bubbles within the bread resulting in inconsistent bread quality. The bread may also fail to bake correctly if the bread is not properly kneaded. This can cause the bread to be either too hard or not hard enough, depending upon the bread. Bread kneading is difficult and time expensive work. To knead bread, a person must fold and flatten the bread over and over again for a period of time. This period of time varies for different types of bread. This is a physically demanding job and time demanding job. Hence, the hiring of bread kneaders.