How to Make Dough Less Sticky (2024)

FAQs

How to Make Dough Less Sticky? ›

If your dough is too sticky and it's impossible to work with you can add some extra flour, just a little at a time. Make sure you weigh the extra flour you add and then you'll be able to adjust the recipe correctly the next time you bake.

Use a small amount of oil to prevent dough from sticking to your hands too much and aid the kneading process. You'll likely have to oil the bowl anyway when it's time to rise, anyway.

Use cold water, not hot

Use cold water and soap to do the first round of cleaning of bowls and utensils, giving them a good soak if you need to. (Just avoid soaking wooden spoons and rolling pins!) Once the big lumps of dough are gone, you can switch to warm water again.

Rubbing a teaspoon of the neutral-flavored fat onto the countertop works just as well as flour does to minimize sticking, and the dough readily absorbs excess oil without any negative effect on its consistency when either raw or baked.

Another option is to simply accept that it's very wet and sticky sticky. Instead of dabbing your hands with flour to keep them dry, rinse them in water to keep them wet! There is a lot of technique to it, you can flour your hands and using a bench or dough scraper that you can also flour helps.

Unsalted dough mixes faster, has little resistance to extension and feels sticky. Bakers who delay the salt addition during mixing find that once salt is added, the dough tightens, becoming more difficult to stretch, but also becomes stronger, and is thus capable of stretching farther without ripping.

Baking Term

If the dough you are using is "sticky" it will stick to your finger when you touch it. If it is "tacky" then it will pull back to the dough or break off clean.

Found in baked goods across the world — tortillas, milk bread, cornbread and cream puffs, to name but four — hot water can speed mixing time; make it easier to fill and form doughs; yield softer, fluffier breads; and create stunning pie crusts like Ms.

Strong, wet doughs spring well in the oven, forming nice “ears” and, if given time in cold fermentation, a blistered crust. But for many, the most coveted feature of high-hydration loaves is their dramatically open crumb or alveolar structure.

The goal of adding oil to pizza dough is to improve the texture of the dough and flavor the finished crust. The oil will specifically: Making the dough softer will improve its capacity to stretch when rolled out. If you don't use any oil, the dough will pull apart and produce holes.

How do I make my dough smoother? ›

When kneading, you need to stretch the dough out and then fold it back on itself and flatten it, and then repeat the process, making sure you turn the dough round between stretches. It can take between 5 and 10 minutes until the consistency of the dough changes and it becomes smoother and more elastic.

Oil does as well and is better suited for keeping the dough from sticking to a bowl or rising container than water is. Water is more readily absorbed. Paul Hollywood shows how using oil instead of flour to knead bread, which helps keep the texture of the dough consistent.

If your recipe is extremely sticky or extensive sticking of dough to the mat occurs, then add a small dusting of flour to the mat at the beginning of the rolling process or as needed.

First, try adding more liquid to the dough. This can be milk, water, or even just a little bit of extra oil. If that doesn't work, you can try kneading the dough for a few minutes to help it come together. Lastly, if all else fails, you can always add in a few tablespoons of flour to help bind the dough together.

Today, I chanced upon a different recipe that said to use Cream of Tartar OR citric acid. I still had citric acid in my pantry, so I went ahead and tried this variation. And lo and behold – the citric acid batch made wonderful non-sticky play dough!

Strong, wet doughs spring well in the oven, forming nice “ears” and, if given time in cold fermentation, a blistered crust. But for many, the most coveted feature of high-hydration loaves is their dramatically open crumb or alveolar structure.

After rests a while, you can punch it back down again, & re-shape it or let it rise again and then bake it. You can't really fix this problem but you can save the dough and mix small parts into your next batch if you can't bear to toss it. Don't add more than 1/5 of the amount of the new batch.