Flour, sugar, butter, eggs – it’s surprising, but from approximately the same ingredients you can make completely different dough: puff pastry, yeast, sponge, shortbread. We’ll tell you what types there are, what they’re used for, and how to make them.
The proportions of the ingredients, the technique, and some nuances determine whether you will get crumbly cookies, airy pie, weightless eclairs, dense heavy cake, or rich bun.
Ordinary yeast dough without a sponge
What they cook: buns, pies with different fillings, donuts, cheesecakes, rolls, open savory or sweet pies.
Main ingredients: flour, water or milk, sugar, eggs, yeast, vegetable oil.
To prepare the classic version, live yeast is dissolved in milk or water, salt, sugar, eggs, flour, and butter are added and the dough is kneaded.
The yeast dough is left to sit for 2-2.5 hours in a warm place, then kneaded and left for another 40 minutes, kneaded a second time, divided, left to rise and the product is baked.
If you use instant dry yeast, the process will take less time. The exact instructions can usually be found on the package.
If the products are baked in the oven, then before baking they are brushed with egg to obtain an even golden surface; if they are fried, then this is not necessary.
Yeast dough
What they cook: buns, rolls, pretzels, Easter cakes, rum babas.
Main ingredients: flour, water or milk, sugar, eggs, yeast, vegetable oil.
This dough contains more butter, sugar, and eggs than the straight dough. It has a more pronounced and sweet taste, so this dough is not combined with unsweetened fillings: meat or fish.
To prepare the dough, first mix the dough from liquid, yeast, and half the flour and leave it to ferment for three hours, then add the remaining ingredients. The dough is left to rise for an hour, after which the dough is kneaded, divided, risen again and the products are baked.
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Noodle dough
What they cook: noodles, chebureki, strudel, brushwood.
Main ingredients: flour, water, eggs, salt.
All ingredients are mixed into a dense, elastic dough and left for an hour. After that, the dough is rolled out thinly with a rolling pin. Despite the absence of yeast and baking powder, the products are well baked, boiled, or fried (depending on the recipe).
Fresh puff pastry
What they cook: puff pastries and cakes, cookies, vol-au-vents.
Main ingredients: flour, water, butter or margarine, citric acid.
The classic recipe for puff pastry requires certain skills and strict adherence to the instructions, otherwise, instead of a fluffy product consisting of many thin layers, you will get a rough and tough one.
Flour is mixed with water, the resulting dough is rolled out, and a flat cake of softened butter is placed inside, which is then combined with the dough using a special rolling pin technique, alternating layers.
After this, the dough needs to be properly cooled, divided, and baked.
Quick puff pastry
What they cook: cakes, homemade Napoleon cake, quiches, Tsvetaevsky pie, tarte Tatin.
Main ingredients: flour, water, butter, eggs, salt.
This puff pastry recipe is simpler, especially if you have a food processor. All the ingredients need to be well chilled, then chopped with a knife or in a food processor and kneaded into an elastic dough. After cooling, it is rolled out, divided, and baked.
Another variation of quick puff pastry is cottage cheese, the technology of preparation and baking is the same, but the composition also includes cottage cheese. From such dough, you can make cookies, croissants, and puff pastries.
Shortcrust pastry
What they cook: crumbly cookies, tartlets, baskets, Basque pie, fruit strips, Baku kurabye.
Main ingredients: flour, butter, sugar, yolks.
Shortcrust pastry products are fragile and very crumbly. You need to prepare the dough by mixing butter, sugar, and flour softened at room temperature as quickly as possible, otherwise, the butter will start to melt, the dough will crumble, and the shortbread or cookies will be hard.
The shortcrust pastry goes well with sour jam and nuts.
Biscuit dough
What they cook: cakes with different types of cream, “Buche” and “Kartoshka” cakes, rolls, and “Savoyardi” cookies.
Main ingredients: eggs, flour, sugar
For a classic homemade sponge cake, the egg whites are separated from the yolks and beaten separately into a thick, fluffy foam, carefully mixing with sifted flour.
Due to the air bubbles, the dough turns out airy and fluffy, but it requires careful handling. If the flour is poorly sifted or, for example, the oven door is slammed hard during baking, the dough may settle and the products will turn out flat.
Other variations of the dough: heated sponge cake, for which the dough is prepared in a water bath; sponge cake with the addition of melted butter or sour cream; “angel” sponge cake, for which only the whites are needed, without the yolks.
Cupcake dough
What they make: large and small portioned muffins, financiers, Madeleine cookies.
Main ingredients: equal parts butter, sugar, flour and eggs, optionally baking powder
To make this sweet, dense, and heavy dough, softened butter at room temperature is whipped with sugar, and mixed with eggs and flour. The finished dough should fall heavily from a spoon.
Cupcakes can be decorated with icing, fruits, berries, and cream caps – you get cupcakes.
Choux pastry
What they make: eclairs, profiteroles with sweet and savory fillings, curd rings.
Main ingredients: flour, water, salt, eggs.
The dough is called choux pastry because flour is added to hot water and brewed there.
Eggs are beaten into the mixture, and the viscous dough is placed on a baking sheet with a spoon dipped in water or is deposited using a pastry bag.
It is important to bake choux pastry products properly, then they will rise well and be hollow inside. Cooled products are filled with cream or other filling using a pastry syringe.
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