Dough, bread… for some, bread is the most daunting thing to make. The yeast died on me. The bread didn’t rise. The waiting time. The bread was hard. The bread was rubbery. There are a hundred things that can go wrong so bread making can well be the nemesis recipe to try for a lot of people.
I have been making my own bread for a while now – almost 5 years. I’m no expert but I can safely say I can bake bread without measurements anymore. Once you get the hang of it, it actually isn’t very difficult.
Crazy Dough
Today I want to share a very simple dough recipe for all you to try and it’s called the Crazy Dough or Universal Dough for everything. Using just this one recipe, I’ve made everything from:
Cheesy Breadsticks
Burger Buns and Dinner rolls
Pizza
Whole bread loaves
Animal buns and sausage rolls
Getting my 5 year old to make her own bunny buns
Tada!
From this batch you will get 1.8 kg dough which is quite a lot, enough to make 4 pizzas (10 inches diameter). If you don’t need that much, just use half the batch.
Crazy Dough freezes well, too. You can always have it prepared and easily make fresh snack or a dinner in no time. When you need it, take it out of the freezer, let it thaw and then use it in the same way as you would use fresh dough.
What You Will Need
- 1 cup (220 ml, 220 g) milk, lukewarm
- 2 tsp sugar
- 80 g fresh yeast (or 4 tsp active dry yeast or 4 tsp instant yeast)
- 6⅔ cup (1 kg) all-purpose flour
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 3 tsp salt (I thought this was a ridiculous amount of salt so I normally use a pinch, and 1.5 tsp for pizzas)
- 1½ cup (360 ml, 360 g) plain yogurt
- 2 whole eggs
Instructions
- In a small bowl, combine lukewarm milk with sugar and yeast. Let stand until yeast activates. It will become foamy and start expanding.
- Put the yeast mixture together with all other ingredients in a bowl of your mixer or food processor. I normally just pop it in the Thermomix and use their knead function. But you can easily do this by hand and with no machines at all. Just knead it for about 10-15 minutes by hand. You should get soft dough, similar to pizza dough. If the dough is too dry, add a little bit of milk or water. If it is too soft, add just a little bit of flour.
- You can use Crazy Dough immediately. Shape it into whatever shape you like, wait a little bit (15-20 minutes in the warm kitchen) until it starts expanding, then pop in hot oven.
credit: kitchennostalgia