The last dough you’ll ever knead

This dough is amazing.

When I made bagels, I reserved half the dough and kept it in the fridge overnight. The next day, I used half the remaining ball to make a focaccia, and two days later, I divided the remaining quarter in thirds and made pita bread.

The bagels, as you know, rawked. The focaccia compared well with this recipe (that old one is an easier recipe, but bear in mind, THIS recipe makes bagels, pita, and focaccia). And the pita? Well, it worked far better than any previous pita recipe I’ve used. They puffed up! They had pockets!

I suspect you could use this for pizza, too, but since it puffs so well (see: pita), you would need to make lots of fork pock-marks all over the dough. Hmm. What else could it do? Breadsticks, dinner rolls . . . you name it.

Here da dough, cribbed from da best baking book, Baking with Julia:

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2.25 teaspoons active dry yeast
2.25 cups tepid water
2 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons solid vegetable shortening (e.g., Crisco)
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 to 2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
6 cups bread flour or unbleached all purpose flour

Notes:

(1) I’m going to give you the heavy-duty mixer method rather than the stir-in-bowl and work-up-a-sweat method. If you don’t have a mixer, you’ll just have to get Julia’s book.

(2) I used a whole foil packet of yeast. Don’t know if that’s 2.25 teaspoons of yeast or not, but I can’t be bothered. It looks like 2.25 teaspoons, so that’s good enough for me.

(3) I substituted 1 tablespoon of malted milk powder for 1 tablespoon of sugar. No, I have no idea if it made that big a difference, but I love that malt flavor and figured it couldn’t hurt.

(4) I used one teaspoon of ground black pepper. It didn’t overwhelmingly influence the flavor of the bagels, focaccia, or pita — none of us said, “Wow, peppery!”

(5) I’m not going to give the details on forming/boiling/baking the bagels, making the focaccia, making the pita, etc., unless people are really dying to know. I’m assuming that anyone brave enough to make dough is also wise enough to know what to do with it. And if you bake, you really really need to buy Julia’s book.

Here we go.

Proof the yeast in 1/4 cup warm water in a small bowl. I added a pinch of sugar and a pinch of malted milk powder, whisked everything to dissolve, and waited until the yeast began to foam up — about 15 to 20 minutes.

Add the proof yeast/liquid to the mixer bowl and fit the machine with the dough hook. Add the remaining 2 cups of water, the sugar, shortening, salt, and pepper. Mix on low to blend. With the machine still on low, gradually add 5.5 to 6 cups of flour (1/2 cup at a time). Continue kneading on low to medium speed for 6 minutes. The dough should be smooth, elastic, and somewhat sticky. I kept adding flour (past the 5.5 cup mark, add just a little at a time) until the dough ball just began to pull away from the sides of the mixer.

It helps to have a good, strong, nonstick spatula to push dough down the sides of the mixer bowl or scrape it off the hook.

Form the dough into a ball and transfer it to a bowl coated with half the melted butter. Brush the top with the rest of the melted butter. Cover with buttered plastic wrap and allow it to rise for 1 hour, or until doubled in bulk.

Deflate the dough and divide it as you like. If you use the whole thing to make bagels, you’ll make 10 to 12 bagels. Julia says you can refrigerate for up to two days; I made my pitas on Day Three.

Bear in mind that the refrigerated dough continue to rise, so make sure you have it in a big enough bowl.

***

Another long day today, friends, big OR schedule followed by a committee meeting. I suppose I should be thinking of a Thursday Thirteen, but at the moment, my heart’s not in it. Maybe later.

To my betas: thanks to the evil (and lovely, naturally; the two are not mutually exclusive) Kate, I suspect the whole last quarter of the book is going to change. So if you’re reading it and pulling your hair out, just think how gratified you’ll be to see all that stuff end up in the wastebasket.

D.