Learning to knead properly is simple and it opens up an entire world of chewy baked goods, many of which are favorites for both kids and adults. Practice the steps below and you’ll end up with the confidence to tackle anything knead-able—as well as a kitchen wafting with the smells of fresh baked goods.

Necessary equipment
All you need to knead is a clean space on a counter that you can dust with flour or a large cutting board. A pastry scraper also helps remove any sticky dough left on the surface.

Culinary goal
To learn how to knead any kind of dough and form it into shapes.

Demo
To see the step-by-step process of how to knead, check out our kneading instructions. The basic method is to fold the dough towards you in half, push forward with the heels of your hand to combine the two halves, turn it a quarter turn, and repeat. It’s very relaxing!

1. Play practice
To practice kneading with something nearly everyone already has at home, take two colors of play dough and knead them together until they make an entirely new color. It’s a great way to see exactly how your motions affect the dough as the colors begin to combine. Plus, you’ll even get a refresher course in primary and secondary colors.

2. Adding flour
The amount of flour you add to your dough or your work surface as you knead can be one of the trickiest parts of the process—particularly if lots and lots of flour look like lots of fun to some little chefs. Try taking a piece of the dough from the bagel recipe below and see what happens when a sprinkle becomes a snowstorm; it’s not easy to make crumbly bits of dry dough form a circle. Still, don’t be shy when your dough is sticky—sometimes a little flour is really what you need.

Recipe to try: Emeril’s Homemade Bagels

3. Kneading and stretching
This pizza dough requires some serious upper-body work with 10 full minutes of kneading! Kneading forms "gluten" in dough, which is what makes chewy bread different from crumbly cake. After you’ve let the dough (and your muscles) rest a second time, you’ll have a great opportunity to practice pulling dough into shape. Here are step-by-step instructions on how the pros do it, but kids can also try flattening it by stretching, slapping, and making indents with their fingers into the dough. It’s a great illustration of how dough can change from a mushy ball into something with some serious structure.

Recipe to try: Pizza Four Ways

4. How smooth is smooth?
Dough should generally be smooth and springy when you’re ready to stop kneading. Too much kneading and you may end up with a flat and tough bread, but too little will leave you with something that’s not quite smooth. Stop occasionally to test if the dough bounces back with a light poke of your finger or if still looks stringy. Pretty soon you’ll literally get a feel for when the dough is done. By the way, there’s no reason to stick to traditional shapes for these yummy soft pretzels—hearts, circles, and snakes come out equally as tasty as long as you make them all about the same size.

Recipe to try: Soft Pretzels

Come back next month when we’ll make all kinds of recipes that will allow you to mash to your heart’s content!