The well is used for methods where you work without exact proportions from a recipe.

You start by mixing everything except the flour into your wet ingredients. Yeast, salt, eggs, milk, water, sugar - whatever your recipe needs, it is quirled together. Then you take a large amount of flour and place it either on the counter as Sneftel said, or in a bowl. Or you use the vessel in which you hold your flour anyway (which may be some kind of small vat holding 5-10 kg of flour).

Here comes the well. You make the well in your piled-up flour, it looks a bit like the crater in a volcano. Then you add a little bit of your liquid and mix, scooping just enough flour from the bottom of the well to get a liquid but viscous dough. You continue adding liquid from above and extending your well in the depth and width until all your liquid is added. From then on, you continue the mixing process with gradual addition of flour until you can start making kneading motions. Then you knead the soft dough within its well. Once it has reached the correct consistency, you can take it out of the well and knead further on a floured surface. The well stays where it is, you end up not using most of the flour you started with.

The advantages of this method are:

• you don't have to measure your flour or even transmit the information on how much flour you need through a recipe - you rely on your knowledge of baking to decide when the dough is right *
• you have a significantly reduced risk of lumps when compared to dumping everything at once in a bowl and starting to stir **
• you indeed don't get any sticking to the bowl, since the dough never touches the sides of the bowl - it only touches the sides of the well
• if you are using your counter or your flour vat, you don't have to move your flour around or to wash a bowl
• it is popular ***
• For completeness, I'll repeat the advantage first brought up by Sneftel: It allows you to make bread on a counter or table, without the need to have a bowl

* This is a disadvantage from the perspective of a person with high literacy, easy access to standardized measuring tools, and not-so-advanced baking skills. It was an advantage for the people who established the method, though.

** This point is obsolete if you are using an electric mixer

*** Yes, I consider being popular to be an advantage in its own right, beyond the technical reasons which might have lead to the popularity in the first place. Discussion on this is not culinary-specific and goes beyond the scope of the answer or even the site.

What You Need to Know About Building a Well

Having private access to groundwater is very useful in some areas. The first order of business is finding a licensed water well contractor; licensure is a requirement in most states. An unqualified person can’t just decide to start digging, given the possible presence of underground piping, contaminated land and other unfavorable scenarios.

Finding a place to dig a well is the next priority. This step is crucial to minimize the risk of contaminants in the well water (although the method of well construction also helps with this).

The Process of Building a Well

Certification doesn’t end with finding a place to dig the well. You also need to acquire materials that are up to the job so that the well doesn’t collapse under normal use or allow subsurface contaminants to ruin the water supply. A casing structure at the top of the bored hole maintains the structural integrity of the well, and it is from this structure that the pump protrudes for manual access to the water supply down below.

Another reason why the choice of where to construct a well is important has to do with the placement of the borehole. Beneath this there’s an intake that ushers in the groundwater; whether this intake valve is bedrock or gravel depends on the local geology.

The makeup matters for the post-drilling process, which may require jets of compressed air, bailing or a process of grit-removal called surging. Just how much water can be retrieved at a time will be determined during these processes. Once a location has been found, it will take approximately 1-3 days to build the well.

Well Construction Benefits

Using well water instead of city water can save money when irrigating your lawn. Another benefit is that wells are low-maintenance, with only regular visual inspections and annual water quality testing recommended. 

Check the well cap often to ensure it hasn’t been damaged, and have the water checked for contaminants every year. Before hiring a service professional to test the water, make sure your well is clean so the results will be accurate. If your water starts to smell different or weird, have it checked immediately.

The majority of wells use an electric pump to draw water up out of the ground. This means if you lose power for any reason, your well will not work until the power is restored. That’s why it’s a good idea to have a backup plan for storing water, keeping the pump running, or both. Many well owners invest in backup generators to power their pumps when the electricity is out.

If you enjoy the security that comes with consistent, private access to clean drinking water, consider contacting a licensed professional to ask if a well might be right for your property.