What to do if the dough is too hard

When making pasta at home, you need to knead the dough, but many inexperienced people will find that kneading the dough is not as simple as they imagined. There is a certain ratio between the amount of water added and the amount of flour. Therefore, many people will cause the dough to be too hard during the kneading process. In fact, the reason why the dough is too hard is ultimately a problem of water. Therefore, the only way to solve the problem of the dough being too hard is to knead water into the dough through various methods.

Leave the dough in a container covered with a damp cloth and sugar for a quarter of an hour. The dough will be soft. The protein in dry flour is shrunk. These tiny protein particles can only expand after absorbing water and combining with water molecules. The stretched-out protein macromolecules are intertwined with each other to form a network structure of proteins, which is the dough. After the dough is just kneaded, many protein molecules have not had time to combine with water molecules, so the network structure of the dough is incomplete and feels harder. The principle of sugar dough is to give it time for the protein molecules to fully absorb water and expand and stretch, so as to achieve a more gluten--elastic effect, making the dough softer and more flexible.

Dip your hands in water and pour it on the dough. Don't dip too much water each time. Then press the dough hard with your fist, and do this back and forth many times. Secondly, knead the dough hard. If the dough is still very hard, repeat the above steps, and then keep kneading it until it is the softness and hardness you need. This is called resting the dough. The so-called "resting" is actually to leave the kneaded dough for 2 to 3 hours. If it is too hard, add water and knead it continuously. When you first add a lot of water, it will be like batter, so just knead it and it will be fine. Don't leave it for too long. Also, the dough will become softer as time goes by. If it is too hard, it will definitely not be easy to rise.

When making the dough, prepare a clean large basin, then pour 500 grams of flour into the basin, then add 10 grams of white sugar, 5 grams of baking powder, 5 grams of yeast powder, and 260 grams of warm water, then stir evenly with chopsticks. After mixing evenly, knead the flour vigorously with your hands, knead it into dough and put it in a warm place to wake up for about an hour. Take out the dough after 2 hours, as it will not rise well at this time. Then you can use the dough to make a variety of delicious foods, such as steamed buns, dumplings, and flower rolls.