Best way to clean bowl in which you've mixed bread dough?

September 24, 2009 9:22 AM

Best way to clean bowl in which you've mixed bread dough?
posted by markcmyers to Home & Garden (20 answers total)

Fill the bowl with water and let it sit for 30 minutes. The dough should come off quite easily.
posted by edmz at 9:24 AM on September 24, 2009

I put it in the sink and fill it with hot water. Then I use a sponge. (Admittedly, this is hell on sponges.)
posted by nasreddin at 9:24 AM on September 24, 2009

It's helpful if the water's sudsy.
posted by ocherdraco at 9:25 AM on September 24, 2009

Soak, scrub with something like a plastic scrubbit ball which you can wash later individually. Plan to wash twice, once to get all the dough residue out of it and then again with soap to make it actually clean.
posted by jessamyn at 9:25 AM on September 24, 2009

Fill it with hot water until the dough loosens. Wash as you would normally would. Dry as you would normally.

Is the bowl special in any way?
posted by Seamus at 9:25 AM on September 24, 2009

Fill the bowl with water and let it sit for 30 minutes. The dough should come off quite easily.

I actually go the other way. I let it dry completely, then it usually cracks off in pieces. Especially if the bowl is somewhat flexible. Much easier than dealing with gross stringy gooey dough.
posted by smackfu at 9:26 AM on September 24, 2009 [2 favorites]

I soak and then use my fingernails to loosen anything stuck and then use a scrubber and soap.
posted by Iron Rat at 9:29 AM on September 24, 2009

> Much easier than dealing with gross stringy gooey dough.

I have to agree on the gross part.
posted by edmz at 9:30 AM on September 24, 2009

Much easier than dealing with gross stringy gooey dough.

Also: Add flour to gross stringy gooey dough, remove from bowl, wash bowl normally.
posted by coryinabox at 9:34 AM on September 24, 2009 [2 favorites]

I like scraping as much of the dough away as possible with a pan scraper, and THEN getting the rest with a soapy sponge. Less goo to clean off the sponge later.
posted by scarykarrey at 9:35 AM on September 24, 2009

Put a little bit of cooking oil on a paper towel and rub off the doughy places. Then proceed as normal.
posted by phunniemee at 9:37 AM on September 24, 2009

Best answer: I've had very good luck with a wet flexible silicone spatula. Just rub it down the inside of the bowl while you turn it to pool the excess dough in the bottom then pick it up and throw it out. This way when you finish it off with a sponge it doesn't gum it up too bad.
posted by any major dude at 9:40 AM on September 24, 2009

Best answer: Throw about 1/8 cup dry flour in the bowl, rub it around to collect the sticky gunk, wash as usual. I call it the Dryer Lint Technique.®
posted by balls at 9:42 AM on September 24, 2009

Soak first, clean later. I don't use my regular dishcloth/sponge, as it tends to get too gunked up from all the gluten. After soaking and pouring out the water, I use paper towel to get the gunk out, then wash as normal. (I buy the paper towel you break off in half-sheets; they're far less wasteful, so I don't feel bad using them for little jobs like that.)
posted by heyho at 9:49 AM on September 24, 2009

Scrape when you're done with a spoon that will not damage the bowl, then soak what remains. Or, use smackfu's method, which also works.
posted by OmieWise at 9:57 AM on September 24, 2009

Get a pot scrapper for dishwashing. It's a 2"x2" plastic thingy that is great for getting through hard to remove stuff. It's way better than a scrubbing pad. It's also great for cleaning seasoned pans without soap. Eggs, cheese etc. come right off.
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 10:28 AM on September 24, 2009

Ha ha, I thought I was the only person who knew about the Dryer Lint Technique.® Sounds like everyone has it down; scrape, soak, scrub (a brush cleans off easier than a sponge), rinse, scrub and rinse again.

I find the stainless steel bowl of my kitchenaid cleans off a lot easier than the plastic bowls I used to use.

I generally finish mixing my dough, dump the doughy lump onto a floured counter, clean the bowl, and let it dry while I throw in a few last kneads and shape it into a nice round ball.
Then, I take a ramekin of melted butter and a silicone brush, brush down the sides of the now clean bowl, throw in the round ball of dough, roll it around and brush the top with more butter, cover that sucker up (plastic wrap, wax paper, parchment paper, wet paper towel, clean wet dish towel, whatever) and TA-DA you're in first rise city, homes.
posted by Juliet Banana at 10:46 AM on September 24, 2009

My wife uses "the husband owes me technique"®. Husband sulks and soaks for at least an hour then just deals with it. I use the current sponge then throw it out and start a fresh one.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:56 AM on September 24, 2009

Response by poster: These are some great answers. Thanks. I should have mentioned that I do a lot of my bread using no-knead methods, which typically call for wetter-than-normal dough and leave mixing bowls a real mess. With your help, I now have my method, which I just tested successfully. I start with major dude's wet silicone spatula technique and finish with a variation on balls's Dryer Lint Technique.® Instead of flour, I toss in a teaspoon of Kosher salt, then rub with a damp 3M scratchy sponge. The salt acts as a nice abrasive cleaner and keeps dough bits from sticking to the scratchy sponge.
posted by markcmyers at 12:09 PM on September 24, 2009

Best answer: Here's the trick - flour contains starch. When hot water is added to a starch (or the other way around) it absorbs the water and becomes a sticky mess (which is good if you are making dumplings but bad if you are cleaning your bowl with hot or even warm water). You may be familiar with dissolving corn starch in cold water before adding it to a hot dish - if you don't the corn starch won't dissolve but becomes lumpy instead. Same theory applies when you are washing out a bowl in which you have mixed bread dough, especially a wet dough that will leave behind a lot of residue. First it is generally a good idea to scrape (which you seem to do already), then you can clean out the remainder of the dough with COLD WATER and your preferred scrubbing tool (I like a long handled bristle brush myself). After the bowl is clean you can do a hot water wash. You'll have a little flour residue but nothing like the sponge killing mess you may recall from prior efforts. If you are a soaker be sure to soak in COLD and you'll dissolve all that flour and you will likely be able to skip much of the scrubbing step altogether. Hope this works for you.
posted by rosebengal at 2:45 PM on September 24, 2009 [2 favorites]