Magic Dough

Over the last couple of months, I've been making all of the baked goods that we eat.  I've been making bread for a long time.  Then, I started making tortillas using this recipe from The Prairie Homestead.  They're delicious, and I make a double batch that lasts us up to a month.

For Memorial Day, I was craving burgers.  I had attempted hamburger buns once, and they were alright, but very dense.  Joolz posted some bun recipes for me that I was excited to try.  After reading them, I realized that the bun recipes were very similar to my bread recipe.  Huh, that makes sense!  So I made some buns.

Then I was looking for a recipe for pizza crust.  I found one from 100 Days of Real Food and wouldn't you know - it's roughly the same recipe!  And in the comments, they talk about making pretzels with the dough.

On Monday, I made a quadruple batch of this dough to make two pizza crusts, some pretzels, and some buns.  It was amazingly easy to do.  While I haven't tried it, I'm sure that with a little tweaking, it could also make some awesome bagels.  I'm planning on trying to do just that with this tutorial since that uses just a little more flour and water than I do.

So here it is:  the magic dough recipe!

Ingredients
1 cup warm-hot water (110 degrees)
2 T honey or maple syrup
2 t yeast
2 T oil
1 tsp salt
3 cups whole wheat flour

Directions

1. Mix water, sweetener, and yeast in the bowl of your stand mixer.  Let it sit for about 10 minutes to make sure that the yeast is still alive.  It should be foamy.
2. Mix in the salt and oil.  
3. Add in the flour and knead in the mixer with a dough hook for a couple of minutes.
4. Spray a bowl lightly with oil, put dough in, and let it rise for one hour.

Pizza

• Roll out dough and place it onto a greased cookie sheet.
• Prick holes in the dough to prevent bubbles from forming.
• Bake at 450 degrees just until set.  Don't overcook it.
• Freeze or top with sauce, cheese, and toppings and re-bake until melted.

Pretzels

• Roll dough out into a rectangle.
• Cut into 12 (or more) strips.
• Form into a pretzel.
• Toss into boiling water with baking soda for about 30 seconds each.
• Place on cookie sheet, sprinkle with salt, and bake at 450 degrees for about 10-12 minutes.

Bread

• Spray a bread pan with oil.
• Punch the dough down and shape into a loaf.
• Let it rise until 1 inch above the top of the pan (about 1/2 hr).
• Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Buns

• Punch down the dough and let it rise for another hour.
• Divide into twelve balls and form them into flat circles the size of your palm.
• Place on greased cookie sheets.
• Let rise until hamburger bun sized.
• Bake at 425 degrees for 10-15 minutes.