...bread in a dutch oven

Cost: I splurged on the dutch oven, but otherwise it’s essentially nothing
Time: Not too bad, 1.5 hours of resting time total
Taste: AMAZING

I finally did it. I got up the nerve to make a bread from scratch. Some context: I tried making rolls a few years back with my then-boyfriend, and we could never quite get them right. So I’ve been reluctant to try again. But wow I was really surprised at how well it turned out. Shout out to Life as a Strawberry for this recipe. The other fun thing is that I finally splurged on a dutch oven!

Activate the yeast & form the dough

I actually had to do this twice, because I think my water was too hot the first time and it killed the yeast. I added the yeast to a bit of sugar and 1 and a fourth cups of warm water. In hindsight I would have just used warm water from the tap, but I ended up boiling water and letting it cool down, which took way too long. The yeast immediately started foaming up, and after 10 minutes it was fully foamy. Then I added 2 and a half cups flour to form the dough.

Form, proof and cook

The recipe I was following said to just flower around the dough and cover it with a towel and let rest for an hour.. But when I bought my dutch oven, the sales associate told me she makes bread a lot and likes to add oil around the dough and use a damp towel to cover it. So I did a mix of both. After an hour, I carefully took the dough out, folded it into a ball and put it back to proof (weird bread word for “rest so it can rise”) for another 30 minutes. Then it was just onto parchment paper, into the dutch oven and cook for 30 minutes covered, 15 minutes uncovered.

...pork dumplings from scratch

Cost: Pork and chives added up, but not bad
Time: A few hours, mostly rolling the dough
Taste: Pretty decent

Since I’ve tackled pasta dough before, I wanted to try another type of dough. I didn’t quite have the patience for bread, so I went with one of my favorite types of food: Chinese. This pork and chives dumpling recipe came courtesy of The New York Times, and is pretty easy to follow. I did google around a bit to make sure there were no other dough recipes I liked better.

make and knead the dough

Compared to traditional pasta, this dough has technically even fewer ingredients, but seems like it has more room for failure. The NYT recipe said to add 3/4 cup lukewarm water with 1 egg white into a bowl with 2 cups flour and a pinch of salt. I read elsewhere online that the water should be hot. So, I boiled the water, and let it cool a bit. The only issue was that it was a little too hot to knead together with my hands right away. So I ended up using a spatula to start then switched to my hands when it cooled down.

This is a very wet dough. So I had to really flour my work surface a lot to keep it from sticking. I kneaded it until it was smooth, about 2-5 minutes. Which is significantly easier and quicker than the process of kneading pasta dough. Then I covered it and let sit for 30 minutes.

Prepare the filling

While the dough rested, I chopped up 2 ounces of chives, several cloves of garlic, and peeled and grated 1 tablespoon of ginger. The recipe called for “garlic chives” but I had no idea what that was so I just did garlic and chives. I used a spoon to peel the ginger, which is a trick I’ve learned from youtube/food network/probably other places. Add that to 1 pound of ground pork. The recipe called for sherry and soy sauce in there, but admittedly I forgot…

Form and boil dumplings

To form the wrappers (3-4 inches wide), you can either use your hands or a rolling pin to roll pieces of the dough out. The big issue I ran into was how sticky the dough was. I basically had to flour both the pin and the work surface between every roll. It’s also very elastic, so I’d try and roll it out bigger than I needed, because they kept shrinking back. Then I took a spoonful of filling and placed it in the center, folding one side over the other and sealing with my fingers. Plop those into boiling water a few at a time. The cook time was really hard for me to gauge, NYT said 6-8 minutes or until they become”puffy and translucent.” I didn’t see them becoming that way until closer to 9 minutes. But, even my less-translucent ones turned out fine. I served with soy sauce on the side and boom, done.

...fresh pasta without a stand mixer

Cost: Barely anything
Time: A lot
Taste: WOW

My apartment is tiny. Like, “Wow, I’m impressed you fit both your bed AND couch in there” tiny. But, you won’t hear me complaining, I don’t need much space. It’s just fewer places I have to check after I have a bad dream and am CONVINCED someone is hiding in my house.

There’s a lot of things I’ve cut out in order to save cabinet and counter space, and a stand mixer is one of them. So making fresh pasta, which is honestly so cheap and relatively straightforward, takes a bit more time and energy. I’ve used this Tasty video as a tutorial for making pasta twice now, and it’s worked wonders.

Making the dough

All you need is 2 cups of flour, a little salt, 2 eggs, 6 egg yolks and a little olive oil. Make a well with the flour and dump the eggs and oil in the middle. Make sure the “walls” of your well are decently thick and tall so it doesn’t spill out. Then use a fork to slowly incorporate the flour and the eggs. Eventually it will form a gooey dough ball and you can ditch the fork for your hands. For me with limited counter space, doing this slowly was the key to not making a giant mess.

I’ve gotten comfortable rolling it back and forth with the heel of my hand, then switching hands back and forth. The Tasty video has a good demonstration of this. You’ll probably need to keep flouring your work surface if it gets too sticky, but it shouldn’t be a very wet dough. When it seems springy and smooth, probably after 15 minutes of kneading, wrap it in plastic and let it rest on the counter for at least 30 minutes. In my (very non-expert) opinion, kneading and resting longer than you think is better.

Roll, cut & cook

Warning: this is my least favorite part. It gets so time consuming that the second time I made pasta I just left half the dough un-rolled. This is when it would be good to invest in a small pasta roller. But…I clearly have not.

Cut the dough ball into even pieces, I did 8 chunks in this case. Use a rolling pin (luckily I had one from a pie I made previously, but a wine bottle works too, wink wink) to roll out each chunk into long rectangles. If your dough shape starts to get wonky as you roll, Tasty recommends folding the dough back over itself to try and keep it nice and rectangular. But honestly, I just end up trimming it with a knife if its misshapen and using those scraps later. It should be so thin that you can see through it slightly. I’ve really liked cutting them into a linguine shape, mostly because it’s really hard to screw up. As you make more strips, toss them with some flour to keep them from sticking together. Then throw the cut pasta into boiling salted water for just 2-3 minutes, or whenever it tastes done.

Make the sauce

My go-to is always brown butter and sage. Aside from being so good, it’s also super quick and doesn’t require much shopping. All you need to do is meltdown butter with garlic and throw in some sage leaves. Take it off when it starts to get brown and nutty, but not clearly burned. It won’t take long. Add some of your drained pasta water, then toss in the pasta. Finish with some pepper and parm. Donezo!