bakingdoughpie
I am using this recipe Serious eats pie dough
Every thing went well until I added the water. I have put everything correctly (weighed) and the dough came out sticky. I tried adding flour but to no avail. What could have went wrong, and can I salvage the dough?
I am an Indian and we make dough for everyday bread at home. It's easy to knead dough; you just have to take care while adding water. Do not add all the water you have, and add water slowly and steadily. For pizza dough I follow these steps:
I keep kneading the dough gently and add water or flour as needed. This does require some practice.
I don't think you're doing anything wrong, I think the dough is just more slack than you're used to. As @Jay noted, it can take some practice to work with a wet dough. But once you do, you'll be rewarded with a much more open crumb and a better final product. In my experience, I've found wetter dough and higher oven temps = better artisan bread (in general).
The recipe appears to assume the reader is familiar with the process, but does offer some hints. She talks about scraping the dough out onto the work surface, then stretching-and-folding.
The recipe isn't as wet as the ciabatta I'm making below, but the process will be similar, so I hope this is helpful. I start by putting a bed of flour down, then scraping the blob of wet dough out onto it.
Then comes the stretch-and-fold part, which is just as it sounds. Using a wet pastry scraper and/or wet hands, just get under one edge, lift and pull it away, then plop it back on top of the main dough blob. Then do the same with the other side. Cover with plastic wrap and walk away. There's no process of kneading like you're used to. This photo is after a few stretch-and-folds at 20-minute intervals (I think!), and you can see the dough has started to smooth out and become cohesive.
By the time you're ready to shape, the dough should be a lot more cohesive and easier to deal with. I folded mine into little slippers and put them on a couche to rise.
Add 500 degrees and a baking stone, and I'm rewarded with an open and gelatinized crumb, and a nice crisp crust.
Best Answer
I think the temperature is your issue. 76F is a bit warm-- your recipe specifically states:
If the fat gets too warm, it will melt and you will loose the chunks of fat which give the baked crust its flake. Unfortunately, it looks like this is exactly what has happened, with a side of overmixing. You also mention whisking "it until it had a creamy, mash like texture" which is way too much mixing. Also from your recipe:
That means basically "stir together until it forms a dough in a single mass" not "whisk until a consistent creamy consistency." Pie crust should always have some remaining lumps of fat, as those lumps are what give the crust its flakey texture.
Chilling may help you get it rolled out, but this batch is likely to be unsatisfactory for a couple of reasons. First, there is the lack of flake. Then there is the fact that you mentioned adding extra flour, which would have altered the proportions of the recipe and would affect taste and texture. Lastly, by the time you get it rolled out you will likely have overworked the dough and developed too much gluten in it. That will give you a very tough crust. So if you bake this what I predict you'll wind up with is a poorly flavored, not at all flakey, tough and possibly chewy crust. Not good eats.
If you have the ingredients and time, I would suggest starting over for best results, this time keeping everything well chilled. In the future (if necessary), you can chill the flour and other ingredients ahead of time, and also in between each step, which will help keep this from happening again.