2023-11-25 10:30:00
Even experienced chefs agree that baking requires good skill and complete dedication. It often takes several hours to prepare one dough. But not everyone has the opportunity to spend so much time for a beautiful, rosy pie.
As Day.Az reports with reference to Gastronom, the obvious solution is to buy ready-made dough in the store. But is this idea such a good idea?
The undeniable advantages of ready-made dough
The first thing that comes to mind is saving energy. Especially when it comes to puff pastry. It will take at least 4 hours, and most of this time will have to wait while the workpiece cools. To skip this step and go straight to preparing the filling, shaping and decorating the baked goods, you can buy ready-made puff pastry. There are a lot of options in stores: there is yeast and yeast-free, sweet and more bland, for meat fillings, for example. Even homemade Napoleon cake, known for its large number of crispy layers, can be baked from ready-made dough. Especially if you are conquering this peak for the first time.
Secondly, proven preparation technology and composition. Unpleasant surprises often arise with homemade dough: regular yeast dough does not rise (usually due to low quality yeast or incorrect proportions), puff pastry does not turn out airy after baking (possibly because it was rolled out incorrectly), shortbread dough turns out to be insufficiently crumbly (they didn’t add butter) . The finished dough is less frustrating. Yes, it may not be as sweet as you expected, but the cooking technology itself is usually fine-tuned to the smallest detail. The baked goods turn out exactly as you expect.
Third, you don’t need to keep a whole list of ingredients at home and learn the intricacies of working with dough. In terms of cost, homemade dough is, of course, cheaper, but it often requires a large list of ingredients, each of which needs to be purchased (most likely, there will be some left over). Plus, if you like to experiment with recipes from the Internet, it’s worth knowing that not all of them are created by professionals. Somewhere they could have made a mistake with the proportions, but the dough doesn’t like that. There are variations of the dough that are known to be particularly difficult, such as phyllo: it should be as thick as a sheet of parchment. It is easy to tear while rolling. You don’t have to mess with the finished dough; you can immediately lay it out in layers as you intended.
With a purchased test, you won’t need any special electrical appliances. Most likely, in the kitchen there is a rolling pin, a deep bowl for kneading, a whisk or a mixer. But often even this basic kit for preparing homemade dough is not enough. The industry of devices that speed up the culinary process is advancing by leaps and bounds. Even for a regular sponge cake, it’s no longer enough to have a classic mixer or an immersion blender with a whisk attachment. Planetary will cope with the task better, faster, more professionally. For those who are interested in baking, there are special dough mixers, sheeting machines and much more. Of course, not everyone needs to go so deep, but working with ready-made dough, in principle, does not require any special skills or equipment.
Disadvantages of ready-made dough (and advantages of homemade dough)
First: additives, without which, in principle, it is difficult to imagine a product produced at a factory. Even if the manufacturer is absolutely honest in the composition that is printed on the packaging, the finished dough will, at a minimum, contain not ordinary milk, but dry milk, not eggs, but egg melange. In the list of ingredients you can also find margarine (as a butter substitute), acidity regulators and flavor enhancers. With home dough it’s different – fans of pure formulations can carefully select each ingredient for it and be sure that there will be nothing harmful in the finished product.
Of course, homemade dough often tastes better. By practicing and refining a recipe from a cookbook, forum or food media, you will very quickly understand what ratio of salt and sugar you like best. And, we are sure, you will get your hands on it – at a minimum, a cook of any level can master ordinary yeast dough perfectly.
By the way, if saving time is important to you, keep in mind that homemade dough can also be frozen. Not all, but many types: yeast, puff pastry, shortbread, dumplings, filo. Try devoting one day to mixing, settling and rolling, and preparing the dough for future use. Then package it and put it in the freezer – there it will wait for you until you decide what to do next. Please note that yeast dough is usually stored in a partially sealed container to keep bacteria alive, puff pastry is stored in a layer so as not to disturb the layers, and yeast-free dough can be packed airtight.
When is the right time to make homemade dough?
If you are making a sponge cake, a good one cannot be frozen and stored for a long time; it is liquid and loses its desired qualities. If there is an urgent need, you can try to extend the life of the finished, baked cake by putting it in the freezer. Fresh, however, will be much tastier. Choux pastry is also impossible to buy in the store; you will have to prepare it yourself. However, for choux pastry there are ready-made dry mixtures that greatly facilitate the process if you follow the instructions. But finished products, for example, profiteroles with cream, freeze well. They can be prepared for future use and stored. It’s also better to make your own dough for bread, otherwise the point of baking homemade bread is lost. If you don’t want to knead it yourself, it might be easier to just buy ready-made bread. Housewives who value their time should know that now you can buy not only ready-made dough, but also a dry mixture, which will make homemade dough (for muffins, pancakes, donuts and much more) faster. There are even gluten-free options for those trying to reduce the amount of gluten in their diet.
Subscribe to our WhatsApp channel and stay up to date with the main news!
#Storebought #homemade #dough #housewives