Rolling in It
Most of my culinary life has been consumed by an epic battle with dough. Granted, it tends to be the sort of epic battle where one warrior tribe regularly goes to the supermarket and purchases frozen heads to present to their villagers as freshly severed. But the battle rages on nonetheless, even if only in the minds of those who receive my ill-gotten spoils.
It’s been a considerable source of annoyance in my life that I hold a deep fondness for pie, but am incapable of producing a basic crust that even the most devoted mother would be able to turn the corners of her mouth up at when her five-year-old approaches her on Mother’s Day and proudly proclaims, “Look what I did!” And I can’t even fathom how bread can be produced in such massive quantities when the sheer volume of timber required to keep up the supply of Betty Crocker boxes would drive entire ecosystems to the brink of extinction.
After years of quiet acquiesence to my fate as being nothing more than a purchaser of baked goods, I decided to tackle to the problem head-on. It’s difficult to feel like a man while being constantly bested by a series of fluffy pastries (or, more frequently, insufficiently fluffy pastries), and there’s only so much indignity a man can suffer before he must stand up, raise his pastry brush on high, and scream to the heavens, “Enough!” So it was that I set out to conquer my nemesis, vowing never to rest until the tears of my dinner guests had ebbed to a mere trickle.
I decided to begin my journey with a simple pizza crust. I figured that the unreasonably large quantity of pizza I’ve devoured since the Ninja Turtles successfully dismantled my parent’s pro-vegetable agenda must have bestowed upon me an innate understanding of how the basic ingredients work. Without bothering to reflect on how long it’s been since the last time I made my own cheese, I dove into my first pizza dough. But in a matter of minutes I discovered that I lacked one of the most vital ingredients: common sense.
I’ve always read that baking is a more exact science than, say, grilling or boiling because ingredients really need to be in correct proportions. This is not simply to produce the desired taste, which is a subjective matter and can bend to the whims of the chef, but rather to produce the requisite chemical reactions to cause the ingredients to structurally behave how they’re intended to. So when baking, I tend to assume that the person who created the instructions knows more than I do, and much like the second-grader who breaks down in epileptic fits if the promised Slot A was not around to have Tab A insterted into it, I resist any temptation to think independently and make my measurements unquestioningly until someone else points out that souffle isn’t typically supposed to be incandescent.
But in reality, this scientific approach isn’t as exact as one might expect. Whether due to measurement, quality of ingredients, humidity, or whatever, subtle (and occasionally drastic) adjustments must sometimes be made when the theoretical ingredients are combined into an unfortunate reality. To make these adjustments, the chef needs a discerning eye with which to assess their product as it is being constructed. However, not having a wealth of experience to draw from, I opted to throw my discerning eye out the window and replace it with a healthy dose of blind subordination.
I followed my directions to the letter and upon mixing the ingredients together, I couldn’t help wondering why my dough had roughly the same consistency as uncooked Jell-O. As much as I wanted to avoid critical thinking, the solution seemed fairly obvious: I needed to add more flour. So I proceeded to do so until I had more or less doubled what the recipe had originally demanded. While the casual observer might still have mistaken the contents of my bowl for a watery and oddly beige cottage cheese, I was sure I’d used far too much flour and decided to stop in the hopes that some as yet unknown magic in the kneading process would turn my goopy mess into something more useful.
And it did. No sooner did I pick up my concoction than I found myself in possession of a brand new, form-fitting, dough colored glove that I couldn’t remove to save my life. My girlfriend was due to arrive any minute, and I was overcome by the image of my life quickly descending to the level of a sitcom where I have to open the door with my mouth and make increasingly implausible excuses for why I have to keep hiding my hand and backing out of rooms (football injuries, war wounds, training for the Olympic tryouts in the reverse 100 yard dash, etc.). I was thankfully spared from any such ruse when extensive use of three different faucets finally freed me of the unwanted garment, and instead I only had to explain to my date why I had three clogged drains.
As I didn’t want my newly-freed arm to be gnawed off by my dinner guest, I quickly launched into my second attempt, which was considerably more successful. After the previous debacle I decided to ignore all instructions to the contrary and just keep adding more and more flour until I had made a dough ball that I could dribble with. This approach went much more smoothly, and I was convinced that I had managed to pull off a coup. That is, until I removed my dough from the refrigerator and wondered why it hadn’t risen as much as it was supposed to. Assuming that I’d just set my rising hopes too high, I went ahead with the scheduled agenda and an hour later found myself eating my very first unleavened pizza. Only then did I realize that quadrupling the flour had probably left the original, paltry quantity of yeast unable to do more than enjoy a quick nibble on the surrounding carbohydrates before passing out from exhaustion.
Undeterred, I decided to shift my attention to pie crusts. Some of my earliest baking failures had been with pie crusts, so I optimistically decided that they should be my last. What is more, I decided to conquer them when trapped on a mountain with a roomful of virtual strangers. After all, the pressure of my own expectations can be a bit daunting, so why not alleviate them by surrounding myself with the expectations of others? But erring on the side of caution, I decided to make two pies. That way I could pass off the first pie as a practice round if it proved inedible.
Again, the troubles set in early, and again, they could have easily been avoided with the most modest amount of thought. I’d accidentally bought wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour. But since I didn’t have my car and couldn’t bear the embarrassment of asking someone to drive me to town so I could exchange the bag of flour I hadn’t had time to read to read, I decided to assume that, years of eating wheat bread notwithstanding, there wasn’t really any difference between white and wheat flour.
Making the substitution was simple enough, but I quickly found another measurement problem. Even after using triple the recommended amount of ice water to collect the dough, it was as dry as an economics textbook and twice as difficult to work with. But ignoring my instincts once more, I decided to assume the the author of my recipe had both prescribed the right amount and made allowances for my shopping deficiencies. So I decided to love my dough unconditionally and roll that sucker right out.
Rolling to my first pie crust in ages led me to question the infallibility of my recipe for the first time when I noticed that in order to roll my crust to a size that would cover the requisite pie plate, I had to roll it so thin that only its dubious structural integrity would have kept it from passing as cellophane. Rolling has always been a challenge for me as I tend to under-flour my counter tops like they were pizza dough. And my sorely remedial rolling skills aren’t helped by being applied to something so thin it defies friction. But after enlisting a second set of hands, we managed to transfer what we were generously agreeing to call a crust into the waiting pie plate with only minimal tearing, which was easy enough to cover up as the beach-like consistency prevented any individual cracks from being apparent. While the end product was a bit more crumbly and dry that might have been ideal, it held together functionally and was actually quite tasty. Perhaps not the greatest success story in the history of western civilization, but it was leaps and bounds from my first disastrous pizza crust.
Pie Number 2, much like pizza 2, went much better. I’d managed to find just enough regular flour for one double pie crust, used just enough water to get it to collect without resembling The Wicked Witch of the West during monsoon season, and rolled it out with only minimal counter sticking. Had I been making a five inch pie, my crust would have been perfect. However, as before, I hadn’t accounted for the possibility that the recipe I was using might not accurately reflect the size of your average pie plate. (I like to think that the recipe didn’t account for the fact that Americans are so overweight that even our pie plates need a few extra notches on the belt.) But by this point, my lovely kitchen assistant and I had perfected our four-handed traslucent dough moving technique and transferred our crusts at the appropriate times. And when the finished product emerged from the oven, it more than made up for its lack of thickness with buttery deliciousness.
Having experienced some notable success with my final pie, I decided to up the ante and take on empanada dough. The recipe would be similar enough to the pie crusts that I could learn from my previous pitfalls, but would present the added the challenge of having to perform the dreaded task of rolling an extra eleven times.
Armed with only my wits and, thanks to the unexpected realization that I don’t own a rolling pin, a heavily floured fifty-cent cup from Target, I stared destiny in the eyes and I. Made. Empanadas. The dough was closer to perfection than I ever could have imagined, and rolled with all the ease of a joint at a Phish concert. With the help of a light egg wash, they emerged from the oven perfectly brown, perfectly flaky, and perfectly moist. If a fault could be found, it was that they weren’t served at the feet of kings.
And so it was that I held my head high and for the first time I emerged from the kitchen not as a purchaser of baked goods, but as their producer, their master, their equal. That night I was the baker man. That’s right, a man.
Now if I could only figure out how to make cupcakes…
-TC