Doughs Category
barquette
This is a small round or oval pastry shell that's usually topped with sweet or savory fillings.
Learn morebread dough
You can make this yourself, or buy ready-made dough in the frozen foods sections of your supermarket. In addition to baking them into bread, you can use them to make breadsticks, pizza dough, buns, rolls, and bagels.
Learn moregnocchi
Gnocchi are Italian dumplings made from potatoes and other ingredients. They work best with light sauces, so as to showcase the pasta's subtle flavor and texture.
Learn morekadaif
Cooks in Greece and the Middle East use this shredded dough to make sweet desserts. You can find it among the frozen foods in Middle Eastern and Greek markets. While working with it, cover any unused dough with a damp cloth.
Learn moremasa
This is a dough made from ground hominy that's widely used in Mexico to make tortillas and tamales. There are two kinds: The softer masa molida is used to make tortillas, while the coarser and thicker masa preparada is for tamales. Hispanic markets often sell ready-made masa in the refrigerated section, but you can easily make your own if you have masa flour.
Learn morematzo ball
Matzo balls are dumplings made from matzo meal, chicken fat, and eggs. They're often cooked in water, and then served in chicken soup. You can easily make them from scratch, or buy them in cans. The plural of knaidel is spelled either knaidlech, knaidlach, or kneidlach.
Learn morepatty shell
These are small cups made of puff pastry that are meant to hold individual portions of savory fillings. Look for them in bakeries or among the frozen foods in supermarkets.
Learn morephyllo
These are fragile, paper-thin sheets of dough that are usually basted with melted butter and then stacked until they're many layers thick. When baked, the combined layers make a rich, flaky, and crumbly crust. Greeks use phyllo dough to make baklava and spanakopita, while phyllophiles elsewhere use it to make pie crusts, strudels, Beef Wellington, egg rolls, and countless other concoctions. Some cooks use cooking spray instead of butter between the layers to trim fat and calories. The dough dries out quickly, so work fast once you've opened the package, and cover any unused dough with plastic wrap topped with a damp towel. Use fresh dough if you can find it; it doesn't tear as easily as the frozen kind. The frozen version is often wedged near the pie shells in the supermarket's frozen food case; let it defrost in the refrigerator for 24 hours before using it. Try Greek or Middle Eastern markets for fresh.
Learn morepie pastry
This pie dough is easy enough to make at home, or you can find it ready-made among the frozen foods of most supermarkets.
Learn morepoi
Hawaiians make this out of taro root, which is cooked, pounded into a paste, and then sometimes fermented. It's somewhat bland, and usually served as an accompaniment to other foods, much like mainlanders serve mashed potatoes.
Learn morepolenta
This Italian specialty is made of cornmeal that's been cooked into a thick mush. The mush is either served hot, much as Americans would serve mashed potatoes, or it's cooled, sliced, and then fried, grilled, or baked. It's easy to make at home, or you can get tubes of ready-made polenta in the refrigerated section of many supermarkets.
Learn morepuff pastry dough
This is dough topped with chilled butter that's rolled out and folded again and again until there are hundreds of layers of butter and dough. The dough expands and the layers separate when it's baked, creating a marvelously rich and flaky pastry. Puff pastry is used to make croissants, Napoleons, Beef Wellington, pie crusts, and many other sweet and savory pastries. You can make puff pastry yourself, but it's hard to improve on the ready-made stuff sold in the frozen foods section of many supermarkets. Let frozen puff pastry defrost for about 30 minutes before you roll it out, but don't let it get too warm or it will become sticky.
Learn moreseitan
This is a vegetarian meat substitute that's rich in protein, low in fat, and chewy enough to pass for steak or chicken. It's made by mixing gluten flour or wheat flour with water, kneading it, washing away the starch with water, and then cooking the rubbery gluten that remains in a flavored broth. The seitan can then be sliced or shaped however you like and then fried, steamed, baked, or added to stews. Look for packages or tubs of it in the refrigerated sections of Asian markets and health food stores. You can also buy it in the form of meat-flavored sausage, salami, and deli cuts. Store seitan in the refrigerator for up to ten days, or for up to six months in the freezer.
Learn morestrudel dough
This is used by German and Austrian cooks to make strudels, delicate pastries filled with sweet or savory fillings. The dough is made up of many layers, each rolled into a tissue-thin, almost transparent sheet. German cooks make strudels with it by stretching the dough and wrapping it around a filling, and then baking it. It's hard to find, but your best bet is a German market.
Learn moreyufka
This is the Middle Eastern and North African version of phyllo dough, with leaves that are slightly thicker and sometimes round. It's used to make savory pastries.
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