In the rush to get bread into the oven, many home bakers skip the first, most critical step of the process.

They mix everything at once—flour, water, starter, salt—and then wonder why their dough fights them. Why it tears when they stretch it. Why the crumb is tight. The missing variable is Autolyse.

Dough is a contradiction. It is a solid that flows like a liquid. In physics, this property is called Viscoelasticity. It means the material has both viscous (flow) and elastic (snap-back) characteristics.