Dough | Sybaritica

In a series of upcoming articles, I am looking forward to cooking a variety of different dumpling recipes and the whole point in today’s post is to provide a ‘reference’ recipe for the basic dough in order to avoid repeating myself several times later.

Before we begin, I should first specify exactly what it is I mean by ‘dumpling’…

If you do a search of the term at Wikipedia, you will find that the word dumpling encompasses a whole range of different culinary preparations and that, essentially, there are two main categories: those that are solid masses of dough cooked chiefly in liquid dishes such as stews, and the like, and those that consists of ‘wrappers’ around some sort of stuffing. In my upcoming posts, will be concentrating exclusively on the latter sort, with special emphasis on Chinese varieties.

Even when one considers Chinese cuisine alone, the range of dumpling types is incredible. Aside from the infinite varieties of fillings, there are multiple types depending on cooking method (boiled, steamed, deep-fried, shallow fried etc.), and also on the constitution of the dough. The various flours employed in the different doughs include glutinous (and non-glutinous) rice flour, corn starch, tapioca flour and wheat flour, all of which produce different results. As noted in the title, our basic dough will be of the all-purpose wheat flour variety. It is a very versatile and easy dough to make, typically used in such commonly known Chinese specialties such as Jiaozi (餃子), Shui Jiao (水餃), Wonton, Xiaolongbao (小籠包), the very popular Guotie (鍋貼) known as ‘Potstickers’ here in the West, and a whole range of other types beyond.

Let’s begin … Read more