If your goal is to have less developed gluten in your dough (as it would seem using Caputo 00 flour) hand kneading is better; if for no other reason than you can feel when the dough is kneaded to your desired stiffness. I've never been particularly impressed with general purpose mixers like a Kitchen Aid, so I've hand-kneaded my dough for years. Within the past couple of weeks I've been using, and more than satisfied with, an out-of-production Hitachi bread mixer. Unless you consider texture a part of taste, I don't think there is a taste related difference between hand and machine kneaded dough. If the human palate was about 100x more sensitive, I would say that there would be a difference in taste between long and short chains of protein, which is what we're really talking about when we talk about developing gluten, but that just isn't the case.
- red.november
