Why does dough need time to rest?
Dough's Secret Nap
Why does dough need time to rest?
You've mixed flour and water into dough, and now the recipe says: "Let it rest for 30 minutes." Rest? It's not tired. It's not sleeping. So why does a blob of dough need a break?
Inside that dough, something invisible is happening. When you first mixed flour and water, you tangled up long stringy proteins called gluten — imagine a thousand rubber bands getting knotted together all at once.
