1. Straight dough method-mix the dry ingredients, add the warm water with dissolved yeast, and the dough is ready to be kneaded.

2.Sponge method-mix half of the flour with all dry ingredients and yeast but omit salt. Add part of liquid ingredients to form a sticky, almost runny dough. Set this sponge, covered, in a warm place for several hours or overnight. The yeast feed on the sugar to produce a fermenting, bubbling mass. They multiply rapidly during this period of fermentation.

When you are ready to bake, work the rest of the flour and salt into the sponge, knead and let rise. The sponge method replaces the first proofing of the dough so you may shape the bread after kneading. But an extra proofing time helps to create a better-flavored bread.

The sponge method, centuries old and used as standard in many commercial bakeries, produces the same dough as the straight dough method. The resulting bread, however, is moister and richer-tasting because acid-producing bacteria in the sponge have had a chance to add their byproducts with their pleasing, slightly tart flavors. It does take longer than the straight dough method, so it is no longer suitable for large-scale bread production where time is money.

Choose whichever method you prefer and have time for. Recipes often specify one or the other, but there is no reason why you cannot change the recipe to suit your preference or time constraint.

You have three choices for mixing dough, provided you own a food processor and a mixer. If you don’t own either, your only choice is by hand.

Kneading a stiff bread dough is about the most demanding job you can ask of a home appliance, or yourself for that matter. The machine needs to be quite powerful to be able to do the job without overheating or stalling. A small or even a medium-sized food processor or mixer won’t do. However, kneading by hand is not difficult. It just takes a little longer and can relieve a lot of anger or frustration if you really get into roughing up the dough like you should.

Here are two of the most popular dough mixing methods when using your hands.

1. Add the dry ingredients to a bowl. Mix liquid ingredients in a container, including the dissolved yeast, slightly beaten eggs and milk if the recipe calls for these. Slowly add the liquid ingredients to the bowl while stirring with a heavy spoon. As the dough starts forming, it gets harder and harder to stir.

When it gets to this stage, dump the dough on a large cutting board or counter top, and switch to hand mixing. As soon as the dough is formed, start kneading. If it feels too sticky, sprinkle a little more flour on and work it in. If too stiff, sprinkle the dough with water and work it in.

2. The second method is faster and more professional, using a dough cutter, also called the bench scraper, a very useful kitchen tool. A dough cutter is square 4×6-inch (10 to 15 cm) steel wit a handle on one long edge.

The straight edge of the dough cutter is its blade, not sharp as a knife but thin enough to easily cut dough. It also makes cleanup work easy when you use it as an efficient scraper to clean the dough off your work surface.

To mix dough with a dough cutter, pile the dry ingredients in a small mound in the middle of your work surface. Your liquid ingredients are ready in a bowl. Reshape the flour mound to form a large well in the middle, and pour all liquid into this well.

Using the blade of your dough cutter start mixing the flour into the liquid little by little, scraping small additions at a time into the liquid until well mixed, then adding some more. Keep an outside dike of dry ingredients around the liquid so none escapes from the well. By the time you get to the last ring of flour, the ingredients should form a dough. Now a few more turns by hand and the dough is ready for kneading.

A variation on this second method is to use your hands instead of the dough cutter to draw the flour into the liquid. It is also fast, but you end up with sticky, gooey fingers, a sure signal for the telephone to ring. A good bread dough is neither sticky nor stiff but just comfortable to shape or manipulate.

However, it is always better to be slightly on the too-moist side than too stiff. If your dough is too stiff, it resists the force of the enlarging bubbles and you don’t get the fullest rising possible. A very stiff dough barely rises on proofing or in the oven. A slightly sticky dough rises much better, plus it also has plenty of extra moisture to turn into vapor in the oven, vapor that further helps to enlarge gas bubbles in the dough giving you a coarse, airy, light texture. But beware of too sticky dough or it spreads on the baking sheet before it solidifies.

Most bread recipes call for a fixed amount of liquid and instruct you to adjust the dough by adding more or less flour. However, starting with fixed amount of flour is a better approach, because you end up with a specific-sized bread. Start with the flour and add warm water gradually until the dough has the perfect consistency.

When you add sharp-edged ingredients to your dough, such as coarse cracked grains, it is a good idea to add them only after kneading and mix them in by hand. The sharp edges may damage the gluten strands and sheets, particularly with powerful machine kneading. Damaged gluten can limit the dough from rising to its fullest.