Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with dough

Best Cookie Dough?

wonderyak — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:16:55 -0800

What's the best cookie dough for a school fundraiser? My wife is organizing a cookie dough fund raiser for her Pep Band. Much to my surprise, there are a lot of companies that offer fundraising-specific cookie dough. Does anyone have any recommendations on which is the best?

Failure to launch

knystress — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:10:19 -0800

Help, my dough didn't rise! I'm using the good ol' Joy of Cooking White bread recipe, and I'm reasonably certain I followed the directions to the letter, but my dough didn't get all smooth and bubbly when I kneaded it, and then it didn't rise at all, not even a little! Where did I go wrong, O clever MeFites, and can I salvage this?

How can I put the sour back into the sourdough?

IndigoJones — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 11:07:23 -0800

Slight tangent from this question: the sourdough rises on command and leavens the bread, texture is fine - but the sour is gone. The best batch it ever made was on initial activation from the Ed Wood envelope somewhere over a year ago. Since then- not so much. In fact, not much at all.

Any advice on how to bring back that tangy feeling is what I'm looking for, and will be most grateful for same.

Tortilla dough in SF?

garethspor — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 09:12:55 -0800

Are there markets in San Francisco where I can buy the dough to make tortillas? Giving a tortilla press as a Christmas present tonight and would like to have some of the appropriate dough on hand. I feel like I've seen this for sale at markets before but have no idea where. Anyone have experience with this and know where in San Francisco I could pick some up easily? Cheers...

The Search for Forgoza

jake — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:29:46 -0800

Is my favorite food unique to one store, or is it made elsewhere under different names? An unavoidable stop during visits to my hometown of Kendall, FL is Norman Bros. Produce, to buy a half-dozen pans of "Forgoza Bread".

Here is a copycat recipe - it's essentially a pie pan filled with dough roughly mixed up with garlic, herbs, and onions. It's very soft and chewy throughout (slightly focaccia-ish top crust) and you just eat it out of the pan, by the fingerful. The very thought of it is driving me mad with lust right now.

I haven't found anything like it anywhere else, in 5 different cities I've lived in across the US. Google searches for "forgoza" all link to the same recipe, and I don't even know where to start looking for alternate names it might have elsewhere, or similar types of bread. I've tried following that recipe, but it's less than perfect - it doesn't seem to "congeal" into a lumpy mass that you can pull apart, and if I cook it long enough that the inside isn't raw, the top gets too dry. It's supposed to be moist and moderately oily. Seems beyond my meager baking skills, but I'm probably making the dough wrong.

They won't ship me a crate of it, the bastards. Maybe I can convince a family member to do so, but I'd rather find a local "pusher".

So before I give up hope and settle for the health-friendly option of only having it once every couple of years, I'll ask you guys: Does this stuff go by a different name elsewhere, or is this a unique gem?

(note: In lieu of further etymological research, I would also gratefully accept dough-making tips so that I can perfect the recipe on my own, thereby relieving my urges through, uh, masterbaking)

How is dough supposed to feel?

chef_boyardee — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 12:09:56 -0800

Newbie breadmaking question: What is dough supposed to feel like when you start and when you end? And more specifically, how do I know whether there's too much flour or too much water? I followed this recipe today for baguettes. I made two batches and noticed that each time the dough started out exceptionally dry and brittle. This didn't seem right, so I ended up having to add over half a cup of water to get the bread to be sticky and firm, and to not break apart while I kneaded it.

I think I did ok as I did the "dough spreading" technique between fingers and saw the translucent pane of dough. That's the only rule of thumb I know, unfortunately. The bread is out of the oven -- it looks great but I haven't yet tried it.

So can any breadmakers advise me how dough is supposed to feel, and how it isn't? What are some rules of thumb I could go by until I get better at this?

Also what's the deal with wooden spoons? Why do so many recipes want me to use one? I've done just fine grabbing a fork out of the silverware drawer.

how to wash out flour?

iloveit — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 15:15:03 -0800

How do I wash flour out of my towels? What do I do with the towels I use for breadmaking? I have some flour sack towels that are covered in copious amounts of flour. Dough has stuck to some of them and dried into a hard mass. I'd like to wash them out and reuse them, but I'm worried about making a batch of wheat-paste in my washing machine. How do I wash these things without making a bigger mess than I started with?

short term, conservative investing

luriete — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 19:37:14 -0800

I just got a $50,000 home equity loan to remodel our kitchen, but we might not pay the contractor for 3 months. Can I do anything with the money to make a little interest, at least to cover the 5.9% interest, before then? Right now it's in our savings account. I realize they start charging us the monthly interest immediately (although I don't know why they don't just wait for you to take it out before doing that, since they're making interest on it as long as it's in our account, right?). 3 month CD? Some kind of special short term blue chip account?

I'm looking for the children's book with a cookie dough airplane.

pmbuko — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 23:11:00 -0800

What's the title/author of the children's book where a kid makes an airplane out of cookie dough and goes exploring? If I remember correctly, the illustrations were quite plump and billowy.