Hello everyone, I am Xiao Gao Jie. Today we will look at all purpose dough.
It can be used for many recipes.
Before we make the dough, let's talk about Baker's Percentage first.
Baker's percentage expresses a ratio in percentages of each ingredient's weight to the total flour weight.
For example, 400 grams of flour, 240 grams of water,
240 divided by 400 equals 0.6, which is 60%.
So the percentage of water is 60%.
Similarly, the amount of yeast is 4 grams, then its percentage is 1%.
The amount of salt is 2 grams, then its percentage is 0.5%.
Why we use Baker's a percentage? It has its advantages.
When we see a recipe,
as long as we know the percentage of the water, we know what kind of dough it is.
If the percentage of water is higher than 70%, we know the dough is soft.
And you can tell it is sticky too.
In recipes, baguette dough is very soft.
Percentage of water is 76%.
Another example, breakfast bread.
percentage of water is 75%.
You know it is a soft dough。
If the percentage of water is below 50%, you know it is a stiff dough.
You see, it is dry, and hard to knead it together.
For example, the handmade noodles.
The percentage of water is 44%.
Another example: shrimp and vegetable roll
This dough is stiff.
The percentage of water is 45%.
The recipes mentioned above are either very soft dough or very hard dough.
However most of the recipes call for a medium soft dough,
in which the percentage of water is about 60%.
For example: leaf-shaped bund.
60%.
Steamed buns 60%.
Thousand layer beef pie 60%.
Chicken dumplings 60%.
Chinese chive pockets 60%.
Some are close to 60%.
Pan fried dumplings 62.5%
Steamed rolls 58%
In most of recipes, the percentage of water is about 60%.
Conversely, the dough with 60% of water is used most often.
Now, it becomes clear that the percentage of water of our all purpose dough
is about 60%.
With this ratio, the dough is neither hard nor soft, and easy to work with.
Water absorption is different among flours, you might have to adjust the amount of water.
After we know the water and flour ratio, it becomes easy.
Let's take a look at the effect of yeast, salt, sugar and oil/fat in the dough.
Yeast is a leaven agent, its purpose is to provide bubbles.
Fermentation is affected by the temperature and time.
Usually the percentage of yeast is about 1%.
If you only need a little bit bubbles, add less.
For example, in Chinese chive pocket recipe, I only used 0.2% yeast.
The role of salt is to provide flavour, tighten the gluten, and retard yeast growth.
Some special recipes call for a lot of salt,
but in common recipes, the percentage of salt does not exceed 1%.
When the amount of salt is small, these effects are hardly noticeable.
So you can add a little bit salt, or not.
Sugar.
It provides sweetness, darken the colour, especially in deep-fried and baked foods,
and help fermentation in the beginning.
But without sugar, when starch is broken down, there will be enough sugar for yeast fermentation.
If you need a sweet taste, add some sugar. Otherwise you don't have to add sugar.
Let's look at oil.
If oil is added before the gluten is formed, it can block the formation of gluten.
When added after gluten is formed,
oil wraps around the gluten, which can soften the food.
From my own experience, I add oil to the dough if it will be baked.
I omit the oil, if the dough will be boiled, such as noodles.
Other than that, oil is optional.
Two other ingredients often added to the dough are milk and eggs.
Let's take a look at the egg.
Egg yolk darkens the food colour, specially when it is baked or fried.
Egg white is equivalent to water.
Eggs can also add flavour.
Milk. In recipe, milk and water are often interchangeable.
Milk has a bit more fat, protein and light milky flavour than water.
Lactose in milk can also deepen the food colour.
After tried so many recipes, we have come to our multi-purpose dough recipe:
flour 400 gram
water 240 gram
yeast 4 grams
salt 2 grams
sugar 15 grams
salt and sugar are optional
15 grams oil/fat.
if it is baked recipes, you can add more oil.
For other recipes, you can omit the oil.
Knead it to smooth, we got our all purpose dough.
After fermentation and shaping, you can use it for a lot of recipes.
Today I use this dough to make some flat bread.
Roll it long, press it down, then roll it up.
Relax for few minutes, then flatten it.
Cook on the pan.
For beginners , I give you a very useful dough recipe
with this dough recipe, you can make lots of thing successfully.
I hope you can understand the affect of each ingredient, so you can make adjustment freely based on this dough recipe,
to achieve the result that you are looking for.
This is Xiao Gao Jie, thanks for watching, see you next time^^