a malleable, uniform mixture of flour (or meal, which is coarser) and water. Other liquids, leavening, eggs, sweetening, flavouring, and shortening ingredients are added as recipes dictate. Doughs are common in cuisines which exploit the properties of wheat (those rooted in Europe and SW and C. Asia), where their most significant use is in making wheat bread. A batter is made from similar ingredients to a dough, but is thin, and mixed by beating, not kneading.
Methods and relative proportions of ingredients used for making wheat-based doughs vary according to the desired product, encouraging or discouraging the development of gluten to give varied textures. See also bread chemistry. Bread dough is made with high-protein flour, leavened with yeast or sourdough, and kneaded with water to develop the gluten, yielding a characteristic spongy appearance and chewy texture. Gluten development is also encouraged in pasta and noodle dough, which is heavily kneaded but unleavened; these have a relatively low moisture content when fresh and are often dried to give compact, long-keeping foods. Pastry doughs, and those for shortbread-type biscuits and cakes, use soft flour, with a high proportion of shortening (fat), and are usually unleavened, giving a crisp, friable result.
These are generalizations, and there are numerous exceptions, including doughs for unleavened breads (e.g. chapati); pastry doughs in which gluten development is encouraged, such as filo; and doughs for unleavened biscuits or crackers, such as water biscuits. Manipulation, cooking, and special operations for particular products are all used to give individual character to dough-based items as disparate as a pretzel or panettone.
Rye is also used to make bread doughs, but is less versatile; oats and barley have limited, regional applications. Doughs based on rice, maize, and other grains are made in non-wheat cuisines, but generally lack the primary importance of wheat doughs.
Staple grains other than wheat have different protein contents, and do not develop gluten as wheat-based doughs do. They include those used for unleavened breads, such as maize-flour tortillas; and those which are steamed, including maize-flour tamales and the numerous glutinous rice cakes made in E. and SE Asia, for instance puto (see rice cakes of the Philippines) and the Japanese mochi.
Laura Mason has written about several aspects of British food in books including Sugar Plums and Sherbet (1998), Farmhouse Cookery (2005), and Traditional Foods of Britain (1999), which she co-authored with Catherine Brown.
