10/09/2026
That gluten structure though 🤩 Here is the window pane test from this weeks first batch of sourdough.
Here is some Sourdough 101 for ya
Sooooo
What is the window pane test?
As you pull your dough it will become thinner and thinner until at some point it tears. This can happen almost immediately, or the dough may stretch so far you can see light through it; this is called “achieving the windowpane.”
The point where the break occurs tells you just how developed your dough is, and whether or not you should continue to work it.
How do you "achieve the windowpane"?
As you knead your dough and do strech and folds, you “exercise” and strengthen the gluten, both strengthening it and aligning it into its desired web. The stronger and more elastic that web is, the more thinly it can stretch itself without breaking — and the better your bread will rise!
Depending on the fragility of what you are working with you can do a plethora of different folds, and stretching techniques. Some kinds of bread will be more delicate while others more forgiving.
What’s happening here?
In order to rise and hold its shape, dough depends on gluten, a series of proteins that form a stretchable web that traps and holds carbon dioxide emitted from the yeast as it feeds. Gluten is essentially the muscles of your dough! The more you work it the stronger it gets, and the better it can support itself.
This is how your starter works too, When you feed your starter and mix it thoroughly, you hydrate the flour and it begins developing those gluten strands.. A highly active yeast population (starter) rapidly produces CO2, the structural gluten traps the gas, causing the starter to expand, grow, and "spring up" to double or triple its original size. So the more active your starter is, the more bubbly and web like it will be, which will spring your starter up to give it maximum growth! Which in the end will yield far better results in your bread!