I have always stretched and folded with the one hand method in the bowl. Tried an experiment and put the dough on the board with a bit of flour and used the method of coil fold. Got a much better final loaf--better rise, more even crumb distribution. It was easier doing it in the bowl but I am going to use this method going forward. Thanks for all your videos. You are my sourdough guru.

I guess the coil folding method sums up to double the folds of s&f: each quarter turn you do two folds, the upper and the lower, so 8 in total. With s&f, one fold per quarter turn. You could try two turns with s&f, to get the same total folds, and see if you get comparable results in the end

Hi Sune. I think a good experiment to be added to your list would be bake loafs in different types of pan, let's say, glass, metal, and stone.

Thank you for your video! I was really struggling with shaping and your non-sped-up video of you shaping the dough really help me hone in on my technique.

Thanks! This was super helpful. I made a no-kneed bread for the first time due to a combination of boredom and necessity during this coronavirus lock-down, and it was unpleasant, like dense cake. This stretch and fold trick really made a huge difference in the quality of my bread.

You have a great approach to test one variable at a time. Thank you so much. I am new to your channel but I will be going back and viewing all of your content on bread making.

Me too, can't get enough of your experimentation. Thanks for doing this!!

Sune, I really enjoy your voice and the pace you speak at. Combine that with breadmaking, and it’s seriously therapeutic! Will try the coil fold method, thanks!

It finally came to me. I’ve watched several of your videos. I just realized while watching this video that you sound exactly like John Malkovich! Love your videos. I’ve learned quite a bit. Thank you.

i do a 1 arm roll. stretch on arm, then roll it up. Fold in half stretch and roll up again. i do the 30 min thing. I got a round bowl. I don't check the window pain or how thin it can get. no bread board. no extra water or flour. Then put in fridge 12 hours and then rise 6 hours and bake. Something happened cuz I never used the fridge before or did a stretch and roll up either. it was just the one handed fold and 1/4 turn. Well the results were great for one loaf. My dough was no where near your hydrated state. It held together in a nice soft ball. The loaf or round was 7.25" tall and 10" around baked. Nice crumb. no big holes. I don't like the honey running thru. I think it was the stretch fold and fried that did it. All I had was bread flour, water, salt and a handful of 10 grain.

I go one step lazier. After I’ve mixed the dough for autolyse, I measure out the starter and dump on top. Then after autolyse I simply mix and do the kneading/stretch and folds. All the measuring is done at the beginning.

I think I might know the answer to why the coil fold produced better structure. With this technique, you keep the tight surface upwards, which then stays intact and and only gets tighter after more folds. With the other techniques, the tight surface is on the bottom and is stuck to the vessel, which means you have to disturb it more to fold it, hence losing that tension that is so sought after. Just my theory though.

I love watching you shape the bread, hypnotizing

What’s not to like! Ignore those thumbs down! Keep up the good work

I love your channel, man, I've just discovered it, and you really do what I need to see, I don't have so much time to "fail" succesfully. Really appreciate your work. Already suscribed. (And you mention my favourite sourdough bakers on Full Proof and Joshua :P )

wow!! thanks for this enlighting video. I tried the lazy man and the one hand stretch and fold. Good i found your video to save time!! I love your channel

Hi Sune! Great experiment as always! I'd love to see an experiment where you'd test if lamination improves the strength of the dough and helps to get a better oven spring and open crum. Thanks again for all the great videos!

Great experiment. Small light bowl did make it difficult, especially on the coil & fold. Too bad you could not rest the "lazy" one - even in a regular bowl lined with a tea towel (that is what I do because I don,t have Bennetton). Well done, thanks so much for doing this!

This was really great. Loved to watch how you handle shaping the dough. Am trying my first coil right now - cheers!

Does anyone here feel like being tied to a chair and listen to this guy's despair after you ruined a batch of dough? I am really feeling a Christoph Waltz vibe here.

I usually do both, one-handed stretch and fold, and the coil fold method it seems to have a better crumb

Thanks. YES, I learned a lot. I do not like round loaves. We use bread that need a square shape. Do you ever make a Sourdough Bread in a Bread Tin. I have Antiques Baking Tins and we like our bread made into these tins. Neat video. Thanks Aria

Fantastic. Love your shaping technique with the scraper, not needing more flour. Awesome.

Awesome experimental video. I REALLY want some of those square containers. Where can I find them?

For baking without a banneton at home, I use parchment on a plate, then placed inside a freezer bag that has been ballooned/inflated to create a tent. This becomes it's proofing chamber.

After having tried many different recipes and techniques I ended up simply mixing everything together, waiting for an hour, agitate it a little (technique doesn't seem to matter for me), wait another hour and (pre-) shape it. almost no work and I still get a beautiful loaf.

A minor correction (I can't resist as I am a retired chemist!); 20 degrees Celsius is 68 degrees Fahrenheit (not 82 as you mentioned in the video). Great video's!!!! Since you are a geek let me share with you a Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion you can do in your head. Lets use 20C as an example. Three steps. 1. Multiply your Celsius temperature by 2 (20 *2) = 40 2. Subtract 10% of the answer in #1 above from your answer in #1 above; (40 *(10/100)) = 4; so 40-4 = 36 3. Add 32; 36 + 32 = 68F Your answer This process is exact and not an approximation. Try converting 25C to F........ answer is 77 Trick question; convert -40C to Fahrenheit (if you get this correct you will see why I drove my students crazy)! I love what you do and the experimental approach you take! Donald Philbin

You forgot one type of kneading in your comparison, kneading itself! It would be great if you could do a comparison stretch and fold vs 10-15min hand-kneading after autolyse vs maybe doing both?

Thanks. This gives me hope that as a new baker, I don’t have to get the folds perfect to have good bread. Making any kind of effort will probably be better than nothing...

Interesting, so many variables.

Very informative thank you! I know you get a lot of suggestions but I wondered what affect the rubaud kneading method has and also lamination, here's hoping you wonder too 😁🤞

Amazing video, thank you, I will try the one hand stretch and fold !

I use a strainer lined up with a tea towel for extra bannetons.

New to your channel and absolutely love the way you experiment! Learnt a lot from your experimentations. You usually hold the finished products up, showing us the results one by one. I'd like to suggest that you have a shot at where you can the the variants side by side as a one view comparison. Keep up the great work!

I used to do the traditional two handed stretch and fold, but since watching you, I now do the Sune one handed stretch and fold. I find your way easier, quicker, less messy and it produces a very nice loaf. Cheers

Hi Sune, I have been following all your videos for a while and I am very happy to use you bread calculator. I have downloaded a 72 hour recipe and have baked it now for the second time. Because I felt at the first time there wan't enough water in there. After checking with your calculator I found out it only was 43% hydration. This bread is made up 2x small quantity of flour and water and 1/2 gram dry yeast over 48 hours, then added to that is a loaf quantity of Flour water and another gram of yeast. Left overnight, formed to a ball and rested again for a couple of hours, before baking. I was happy with the result. Here my question would the bread improve if I did some stretch and fold within those 72 hours? Because at the end I just got the dough out of the bowl shaped it to a ball!

Hi Sune, do you ever use lamination? It seems to help have very even holes and lovely soft crumb. I do a combination of stretch and fold , lamination and coil folds. I am sure that it doesn’t really make a difference, more for my own entertainment.

Thanks. I love watching your videos.

I love this guy's delivery

love the music with sour dough wisdom, beautiful combo!

You are the best among the best! Thanks for everything you teach

So very helpful! You are awesome for doing this, Sune, thanks very much for sharing your experiments :)

Some ideas for future bread science experiments: How to store sourdough loaves to keep them fresh longer (without molding nor getting hard/dried out) and best bread knives.

Thanks for this but surely the fact that you kept them proofing before baking for different periods made a difference. I'd be interested to know the order you baked foodgeek, stretch and fold and coil fold in. If the dough was proofing while you were baking the first three then perhaps the last automatically has bigger bubbles.?

You are so great! Keep up the great work Sune! Thank you for doing all the hard yards for us, so that we don't have to.

Thank you for doing this experiment Sune 🧑‍🍳🕵🏻 .. I really enjoyed your vid. & I love to learn a lot more from you!! I always work like you teach me, I will follow you !!😃

Great video but I was hoping for one of them to be machine mixed or a bench kneed after autolyse to see if an initial kneading helps. Thanks for all the great experiments!

If you baked them one at a time, they all would have had different fermentation times, and that could explain the differences in crumb. Did you bake the coil folded loaf last?

Very informative post. Thank you.

3:58 Coil fold.

Why do doughs collapse? Thank you for all your videos.

Yes I Learned something ! Cool Fold is my friend ! Also Bench kneeding !

Is it bad to sigh in relief as I watch you struggle with sticky dough? I had a real battle today proofing my dough enough so I could shape it. It was an epic fight and I think I won. Tried some coil folding and slap and folds. I see. It goes in the oven in a minute. Do you know what the reason is for super sticky dough? I use only whole wheat flowers, about 80% hydration, and from start to the fridge it takes me about 14 hours, with still enough live in my dough. I really have no clue why it goes from really ok, to nightmare in a few folds, while still not strong enough to make a nice windowpane. If anybody has an answer or suggestion, I would love to hear it. This will be my 8th sour dough bread, so am still a bit of a newbie. I love your video’s and your vibe. Learning a lot! Thank you for your many experiments, so I have to do less...😋🙏

Truly brilliant, thank you! Alrways wondered

Just tried a modified "lazy man". I did 1 stretch and folds when moving from the mixing bowl to a bulk container. The loaf came out like my other loaves, but saved me some work. savem me getting slime on my hands too. I always hated that about stretch and fold. I get slime hands, then do I wash my hands, or just sit here with slime hands for 30 min till the next set of stretch and folds? Now I don't care and its nice. only get slime hands 1 time. well, 2 times counting when I shape it and put it in the banneton. Still its a lot less hassle, i will never do the stretch and folds again

Total noob here. As opposed to using the scraper to pre-shape, could you just use your hands and kind of toss back and forth to shape into a ball?

Interesting results. I wonder if coil fold truly was better, or if it was a fluke. Thanks for making the video!

kneading vs using a stand mixer?

Excellent video!

I've been wondering what a sourdough that is mixed once and then let to sit untouched through bulk fermentation and into the oven would be

Thanks for the experiment. I am curious as to what the results would look like with a larger sample size.

It's safe to say each method yielded insignificant variations.

Agh, I love your experiments :)

I almost punched my screen while you were struggling with the coil fold.

Hi, thanks for your excellent videos. An interesting experiment would be to see the affect of adding the starter before or after autolyse. Thanks a lot for your amazing work!

I have learned so much from your videos. Thank you!

Sune, Thank you. That was really helpful!

20 Celsius is 70 Fahrenheit

Question - how would all of these have performed after an overnight rest in the fridge? (Suggestion - spray your scraper with water.)

thanks for the video! saved me tons of experimentation

Great video! What about slap and fold technique?

this should be taught in schools!!!!

This is the video we all knead!

For some reason I could not open the What Happens If You use Olive Oil in your Sourdough Bread. Thought perhaps you would like to know...I tried 2 times today. Thanks

Great job. I've always wondered which method was best for forming gluten.

much better music choice in this video than the rap I often hear! thanks

What's your experience with slap-and-fold vs. stretch and fold? I tend to use slap-and-fold but that gives less bulk fermentation time, which I assume have some impact. Struggling a bit with finding the time to use stretch and fold :-)

Thanks. This is what I was curious about. I learned a lot^^

Can i use bleached bread flour (not for starter)? Or a 50/50 combo or bleached and unbleached?

Why do you pop the air pockets?

Thanks for this tutorial!👍🇩🇪

while you're at it, you should try to patent breathing too 😆

I thought about your experiment and you resolved one of the questions I had about creating my own formula of the type of high hydration bread I’m looking for. One as you pointed out very cleverly is the folding of the dough. I think what I would like to see is a crumb that is more fluffy, not so full of air pockets, more of a finer crumb but not very dense not wet. So I’m thinking either less water or the use of an A/P flour in the mix or to use 1/4 tsp yeast? What are your thoughts?

It seems to me that the crucial explanatory variable was the length of the final proofing. You should repeat the test but with reversed order of baking. I know it's easy to just ask for another one of these tests, but you seems like the right person to do it. Maybe if you ever need an idea for a new video you could revisit this question.

Hi Sune, thank you for this experiment. Really appreciate it. I will also change to coil fold moving forward. I wonder what are you going to do with all the bread after you have baked them? 😅

Once more, I think you do not need the final shape, as you pre shape the dough for a long time and yes, you take care. You rebel, you.

Thanks for the video. You mentioned that you added the levain to the autolysed dough after it double in volume. Do you remember how long that took in this case?

Great video, thanks for experimenting and doing the "mad science." You have UNvented the one-hand S&F (knitting legend Elizabeth Zimmerman used that term for when knitters re-invent some way of doing something). I've not tried coil folding yet, will give it a whirl.

Benefits from putting some Blu tack under the containers to keep them on the counter :)

Thank you, Sir, for this video, appreciate it.

I subscribed because of the Joshua Wiseman shout out 👌

I love my inner geek--but it can be tiresome to my loved ones who do not share my continued wonderment analyzing different ways to do things. Critical thinking and analysis brought to anything either confirms, denies, or "meh's" the oft-accepted lore regarding this method v. that. Thanks for your well planned and explained vids of different methods. I cranked up some SD starter after a more than 6 year hiatus from using starter to make sourdough French bread. I've made no-knead sourdough, but I wanted to try the more hands on way. Yesterday my starter was strong enough to undertake the task (or so I though). I literally broke my dough (tore the gluten irreparably if one can do that) and I had to throw it in the trash. I was on my 5th handling of the autolyse stage and the dough was just not going ever maintain a shape. It was too "blobby" and I think that it had wannabe horror movie aspirations. I'm sure it was user error, and it is possible in my allergy fuzzied brain I messed up the measurements. It didn't feel quite right at the get go. At turn 3 I thought it salvageable. At turn 4 possibilities dimmed. Turn 5 all hope was lost. My heart and trash can are a wee bit heavier. I'm not deterred--but I may ease back into this and make some SD French Bread today. And I may very well try your other video on easiest sourdough.

I have been baking sourdough for a long while and do not do any stretch and fold at any point. I still get a great loaf; I am not saying it is as good as if I had done stretch and fold, but the pain in the arse factor involved in stretch and fold just does not seem worth the effort. Once I mix all the ingredients together in a 'shaggy mess'' (without autolyse), I leave until it has risen, then quickly shape it (maybe 20 seconds), and place it into the basket.

I usually start with 1 stretch and fold when the dough is still pretty slack, and then do gentle 3 coil folds. sometimes I add 4th one but just make half coil then

Considering that you're using plastic boxes, what do you think of Challengers Proofing box? I'm a beginner baker.

Thanks so much for doing this test!

At the 7:05 mark when you start inspecting the dough using the window pane technique for gluten structure I’m curious what would cause you to introduce another fold and stretch? If you have done 3 spaced over 30 min each, you check your window pane and are not happy, what could have happened? Is flour inconsistent? Is the ambient temperature in the room too low? How many more fold and stretches would you do at this point? Thanks!

Tried the slap and fold method next time!

Thanks for this experiment! I have been a one hand stretcher for years, I will try coil fold next week. I didn't even know that technique existed!

Hey at 11:40 you said the dough is pretty much collapsed? I would like to know what was the difference compared to the other ones right after? They all looked the same right after? What did you mean by collapsed? What’s a good indication of it being “collapsed”?