Dough is a malleable, sometimes elastic paste made from flour (which itself is made from or from legume or chestnut crops). Dough is typically made by mixing flour with a small amount of water or other liquid and sometimes includes yeast or other leavening, as well as ingredients such as fats or flavourings.
Making and shaping dough begins the preparation of a wide variety of foodstuffs, particularly and bread-based items, but also including , , , , , , pasta, pastry, pizza, , and similar items. Dough can be made from a wide variety of flour, commonly wheat and rye but also maize, rice, legumes, almonds, and other cereals or crops.
Types of dough
Doughs vary widely and may be
enriched with eggs, sugars, spices, and fats. With respect to enrichment, the dough are forming a spectrum with two extremes:
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lean dough contains mostly the basic ingredients (flour, water, salt, and, for the leavened bread, yeast);
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rich dough contains enriching ingredients (like milk, sugar, shortening, malt, eggs, spices) in significant amounts. The amount of ingredients are traditionally specified as percentage of flour by weight ("baker percentage"), and for very rich doughs the amount of sugar can reach 25%, and shortening − 20%.
There is no formal definition of what makes dough, though most doughs have viscoelastic properties.
There are several general classes of dough:
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Yeast-leavened doughs are used to make various types of bread including bread rolls, loaves and some types of flatbread. Not all yeast doughs require kneading. High-hydration doughs like ciabatta and focaccia may be folded to develop gluten or not kneaded at all. The addition of milk, salt, fats, eggs, sugar or other ingredients will produce bread products of varying texture. Commercial bread dough may also include dough conditioners, which help make the dough and the final product more consistent. Gluten gives bread dough its structure and texture. Gluten-free or low-gluten doughs may need additional considerations.
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Doughs with higher fat content that contain less water develop less gluten and are therefore generally less elastic than bread doughs. They tend to become tough when they are kneaded.
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use leavening agents other than yeast (such as baking powder or baking soda), and include most , , , and more. These may be based on a batter or a dough.
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Laminated dough such as mille-feuille and puff pastry are flour doughs folded over fat to create layers and rolled out. The folding and rolling process can be repeated to create very thin layers of dough and butter to create the puff pastry. There are many different techniques to create laminated doughs and some like paratha are relatively simple while others like mille-feuille are more laborious.
[Goldstein Darra. 2015. The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets. Oxford: Oxford University Press.] Most laminated doughs are leavened only by the steam created by the folding process. Danish pastry and croissant are sometimes considered a separate class of dough because they are made from laminated dough that is leavened with yeast.[
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Choux pastry is a steam-leavened dough used for some types of sweet pastries, notably cream puffs, , some homemade funnel cakes,
[Alan Davidson. National & Regional Styles of Cookery: Proceedings: Oxford Symposium. 1981.]
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Some dumpling and pasta doughs are similar enough that experts have difficulty distinguishing them, although dumpling is a very general category that overlaps with others like yeasted breads and batter Biscuit. Varying the ratio of liquid and flour in a basic pasta dough may create a softer dough like that used for the German soup noodle spaetzle.
[Heinzelmann Ursula. 2008. Food Culture in Germany. Westport Conn: Greenwood Press.] Eggs are a very common addition to make the dough moist and easier to roll out. The dough can be filled or shaped various ways and boiled, baked, steamed or fried.[Culinary Institute of America. 2011. The Professional Chef. 9th ed. Hoboken N.J: John Wiley & Sons.][Thaker Aruna and Arlene Barton. 2012. Multicultural Handbook of Food Nutrition and Dietetics. Chichester West Sussex UK: Wiley-Blackwell.]
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Gluten free doughs like rice noodles and Japanese harusame noodles depend on the gelatinization of starch for structure.
[McGee Harold. 2004. On Food and Cooking : The Science and Lore of the Kitchen Completely rev. and updated ed. New York: Scribner.]
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Unleavened bread is made not only from wheat but in many cultures has been made from locally available starchy ingredients like corn, oatcakes and cassava since the earliest times.
[Cooking through History: A Worldwide Encyclopedia of Food with Menus and Recipes. 2020. ABC-CLIO.]
Sometimes meringue is considered a dough.[ The English recipe for "Satin Biscuit" dates to 1677, and earlier recipes are known by different names. Some included flour like a 1604 recipe for "white bisket bread".][Day Ivan. 2009. Cooking in Europe 1650-1850. Westport Conn: Greenwood Press.]
Techniques
Techniques used in dough production depend on the type of dough and final product.
For yeast-based and sponge (such as sourdough) breads, a common production technique is the dough is mixed, kneaded, and then left to rise. Many bread doughs call for a second stage, where the dough is kneaded again, shaped into the final form, and left to rise a final time (or proofed) before baking.
Pasta is typically made from a dry dough that is kneaded and shaped, either through Food extrusion, rolling out in a pasta machine, or stretched or shaped by hand (as for gnocchi or dumplings). Pasta may be cooked directly after production (so-called "fresh pasta") or dried, which renders it shelf-stable.
Doughs for and many flatbreads which are not leavened with yeast are typically mixed but not kneaded or left to rise; these doughs are shaped and cooked directly after mixing.
While breads and other products made from doughs are often baking, some types of dough-based foods are cooked over direct heat, such as , which are cooked directly on a griddle. Fried dough foods are also common in many cultures.
, , some kinds of bar cookies such as brownies, and many and (including muffins and the like) are often made with a semi-liquid batter of flour and liquid that is poured into the final shape, rather than a solid dough. Unlike bread dough, these batters are not stabilized by the formation of a gluten network.[Stanley P. Cauvain. (2012) Chapter 12: Baking. in Food Processing Handbook. 2 ed. Wiley. p. 422 . This reference is specifically about cake batter.]
File:Cirdingis36.gif|Dough being Kneading
File:Breaddough1.jpg|Yeast bread dough after kneading, before rising
File:Breaddough2.jpg|Yeast bread dough after rising (proofing), for 40 minutes
File:Pasta machine.jpg|Dough being cut into noodles with a pasta machine
See also
Further reading
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—covers commercial dough production
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—covers home and commercial baking and dough techniques
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—covers home and commercial baking and dough techniques
External links
