Tag: baking

Mom’s Dough Gods

When we kids were at home, Mom made dough gods almost every time she made bread. We devoured them hot from the pan coated with sugar and cinnamon. We thought they were better than doughnuts.

Some people call them dough gobs, but they were dough gods to us. I don’t know how they got that name, but they deserve it. They truly are a heavenly treat, despite the fact that they are one of the simplest foods you can make. Stir up some bread dough, let it rise an hour or so and fry it in any kind of cooking oil you have available. Mom used lard, shortening or vegetable oil, and her dough gods always turned out golden and tasty.

You don’t need a special dough. The recipe below makes a standard nine by five inch loaf of old-fashioned white bread or a batch of dough gods. Double the recipe and you can bake a loaf of bread along with the dough gods. There’s really no extra work to make both at the same time, so you get the loaf of bread as a bonus.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup milk
1 heaping tsp. active dry yeast (1/2 package)
1/2 cup water
1 T sugar
1 T butter
3/4 tsp. salt
2 1/2 – 3 cups all-purpose flour
Oil to fry dough gods in
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon

PROCEDURE:

As with all bread baking, start by scrubbing your hands well.

Put one-half cup warm water (90º to 110º) in a cup with a quarter teaspoon of sugar and stir in the yeast. While the yeast is proofing, warm the milk to about 110º and pour it into a large bowl. Stir in the salt and sugar. Melt the butter and add it to the milk.

Stir in the flour one cup at a time, beating thoroughly between additions. After you have stirred in the first cup, mix in the yeast. Continue adding flour one cup at a time until the dough becomes stiff and begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.

Let the dough rest in the bowl for five minutes, then scrape it out onto a well-floured work surface with a spatula and use the spatula to turn the dough to coat it with flour before starting to knead it. Powder your hands with flour, and knead the dough until it is smooth and satiny, about four to five minutes.

If you have never kneaded dough, you should check out Wikihow.com for an excellent lesson on kneading or go to Thekitchn.com for a good video showing you how to do it. Actually, doing both is a good idea. Just go to the sites and use the search for “knead dough.”

Return the dough to a greased bowl, roll it to cover the surface lightly with grease, and cover the bowl with a damp towel. Put the bowl in a warm spot in the kitchen (I use the top of the refrigerator) and let the dough rise until it has doubled in bulk, usually an hour or a little more. Punch it down and knead it on a lightly floured work surface five or six strokes. Pat it down to about an inch thick and use a knife or baker’s scraper to divide the dough into twelve or fourteen pieces. Roll the pieces into balls about the size of walnuts and cover them with a damp towel.

Put the sugar into a shallow bowl or pie tin and mix in the cinnamon. Put some paper towels in a baking pan or on a plate to absorb any oil from the dough gods after they are fried.

Heat a quarter to half-inch of vegetable oil in a ten or twelve inch skillet over medium high heat. While the oil is heating pat some of the dough balls into circles about a quarter inch thick, then stretch them out even thinner.

Test to determine if the oil is hot enough by dropping a small piece of dough torn off from one of the bigger balls into the oil. It should brown on one side in about thirty seconds and finish in another thirty seconds on the other side.

Put two dough gods into the oil, let them fry for about a minute, then using tongs or a slotted spoon, turn them over to finish cooking. If the first one is not golden brown when you turn it, just turn it back for a few more seconds and raise the heat a little.

When both sides are golden brown, take the dough gods from the oil and let them drain while you put the next pair into the pan. Dredge the two you just cooked in the cinnamon sugar and put them on a plate.

Enjoy!

NOTES: Dough gods are best eaten warm, and a couple of kids can keep up with the pan, at least for the first four or five dough gods. You can omit the cinnamon and even the sugar if you want.

I think that Mom used tongs to handle the dough gods, but I have a faint recollection of her using a cooking fork. Just be careful not to splash any hot oil on eager hands snatching dough gods from the plate.

And finally, I found a couple of recipes on the Web that called for frozen bread dough (thawed and allowed to rise of course). I would never use it, but perhaps I am a Luddite in the kitchen.

Whole Wheat Popovers

If you follow the recipe for “Perfect Popovers”, you’ll be known as the never-fail popover baker in your family or even in the neighborhood. But since popovers are just hollow muffins, it is almost inevitable that someone is going to say, “I wonder what would happen if you tried adding some whole wheat flour to these things.”

I asked myself that question a couple of years ago, and whole wheat popovers appeared on the table one morning. They didn’t pop quite as high, but they were delicious, and I enjoyed thinking that I was eating a healthier breakfast as I spooned some scrambled eggs into half a popover.

They are just as easy to make as ordinary popovers. Just make sure you follow these two basic rules. First, the eggs and milk must be at WARM room temperature; seventy degrees is too cool. Second, don’t beat the batter too long.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup plus 1 T whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup plus 4 tsp. milk
2 tsp. vegetable oil
3 large eggs

PROCEDURE:

Make sure that the baking rack in your oven is in or slightly below the center position. Preheat the oven to 450º. Grease the popover pan lightly and place it in the oven to heat.

While the oven is heating, put the unbroken eggs in a small bowl and cover them with very warm water from the tap. Let them sit for at least five minutes. Warm the milk on the range or in the microwave until it feels slightly warm to the touch.

Mix the flours and salt together in a one quart measuring cup or bowl. Add the warm milk, oil and eggs and beat the batter with an electric mixer for eleven seconds (NO MORE) on high. Take the mixer out of the bowl and stir the batter slowly with a fork to mix in any remaining large dry clumps. Small lumps are OK.

Take the hot pan from the oven and fill the cups evenly; they should be one-half to two-thirds full. Put the pan into the hot oven, turn the heat down to 425º and bake twenty minutes. Reduce the heat to 350º and continue baking the popovers for another twenty minutes. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DURING BAKING. PERIOD.

Remove the pan from the oven, let it cool for fifteen or twenty seconds, remove the popovers from the pan and serve them while they are still hot. Give each popover a gentle twist to loosen it. A table knife works to loosen stubborn popovers. If you want, cut a small slit in the side of each popover to release the steam.

NOTES: The eggs and milk must be warm. The oven door must remain closed during the entire baking period. Have faith. They will pop. You can make popovers in an ordinary muffin pan, but they don’t pop as high.