M. Scott Peck published "The Road Less Traveled" in 1978. The first line is "Life is difficult". In the next 20 or so years, Dr. Peck wrote multiple other books developing a philosophy of life that speaks to living a full life with an emphasis on personal growth and many people agree as well as disagree with his philosophies. In the end, he did not himself follow his own advice. I bring him up here because one of his comments has guided me for years and it is this. Like Dr. Peck, I have little to no mechanical abilities and frequently need to hire experts to do "Honey do" handyman jobs around the house as I seem to have no talent for it. Even though I cook the same could also be said regarding my culinary abilities as my wife will let you know I am very messy and disorganized in the Kitchen. Dr. Peck addressed this in his books admitting also to a lack of mechanical skills. But he went on to discuss that was not really true for anyone. What he discovered was that a lack of mechanical skills, or in my opinion, a lack of culinary skills is all about a lack of patience. I have discovered the same during the pandemic. When it comes to cooking or fixing things in truth I have no patience. I want it fixed now, I want it done now, are we there yet? The pandemic has given me the time to really get into cooking and understanding excellent food preparation and good cooking requires patience. You cannot rush it. When a recipe says to put the food aside to rise or rest there is a valid scientific chemical reason for it and if you rush the process it simply will not work and your food will be mush.
For the past 3 months, Clark and I have evolved our cooking and food preparation and have learned a lot. We would like to pass on some of our new knowledge to you and as my blog is also about food, why not do this? We have in fact found some valid short cuts that make food preparation easier and are able to open new doors to prepare foods you might not think you could ever do. At the same time, I will emphasize those steps that do in fact require patience where you need to slow down, smell the roses, and let chemistry do the work it is intended to do. For the first time in my life these past few months, I have now made homemade bread, biscuits, pizza dough/pizza, and pasta. Dependent on what you want to make this lesson #1 is all about flour, water, and eggs, the basic ingredients of any dough.
Up until the Renaissance, all bread products and pasta were made with water mixed with flour. Somewhere after the 1600s or 1700s eggs were substituted for water and/or added to water. In general, simple dough is flour and water. You can find a lot of information regarding what flour is best for what purpose. Suffice to say at home so far we have used generic all-purpose flour and so far everything has turned out well. What we have discovered however is the ratio of solids to liquids in making dough is important. Important enough to where we always measure now the ingredients.
Lesson # 1 300 grams of flour mixed with 180 grams of liquid, water, eggs, or water egg combination easily makes a dough ball that is easy to handle and then knead. Obviously water weighs more than flour so if you mix based on the liquid volume the amount of water and flour as close to the same ballpark but you can look up the conversion.
Lesson #2 mix any and all flour and any additional solids like salt for example in a food processor and then slowly add the liquid while the food processor is on. In a very short time, it will make an obvious dough ball. It is helpful to let the dough ball rest for a minute or two and then restart the food processor and do that 2 or 3 times. You then remove the dough ball from the processor and it will be sticky but trust me it will be less sticky than if you started out using your hands to mix the flour and liquids.
Lesson #3 you do have to knead the dough ball and that is done by putting some flour on a counter to dry the outside of the dough ball a little so it reduces sticking to your hands and then fold and refold the dough ball onto itself. You do this until the dough ball is smooth to the touch. Almost every reference we looked at said you can never knead the dough too much. But in general the best references we found said knead for at least 8 minutes and for all our recipes it worked out fine.
Lesson #4 here comes the patience part. After you finish kneading let the dough ball rest. You just folded it and in a sense beat the crap out of it, it needs time to recover. Every reference says it needs to rest for 30 minutes minimum. You either put it in a bowl covered with plastic wrap or just wrap it in plastic wrap, either works. We just made pizza dough last night and let it rest overnight with no problems.
At this point, you can make whatever you are making and start cooking. You cut the dough ball into a size that will meet your needs and the remainder can be wrapped in plastic wrap and frozen in the freezer where it can stay for around 3 months. You can also put it in the refrigerator to use in the next 4 or 5 days.
Those are the basics and so far to me easy to follow. I do recommend you review a few YouTube videos to see how others do it and find the one that works best for you. With anything, there is a learning curve but it took me only 2 or 3 tries to feel comfortable making anything and I hope it works out well for you. We now make our own homemade pizza and it has been as good as delivery. My next article will be making basic soups.
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