Knish with Sourdough Wrapper?
Answering my own question (partially)
My tests today seem to tell me that minimizing the rolling so that I get one layer of dough with enough overlap to seal the edge matters more than whether or not I use sourdough or the simple flour-water-oil-salt-BakingSoda recipe.
I'd still like to hear opinions from other people.
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Hi,
Can I make a thin-dough knish using sourdough? Or should I use a baking-soda-leavened dough, or a simple flour-water-salt-oil version? The recipes online are often leavened with baking powder and say that you have to put it in the stand-mixer, which I don't have; or give it a good 10-15 minute kneading by hand, which I don't want to do. I'm confused about sourdough vs. dough-with-baking-power vs. dough-with-no-baking-powder. At this point I'm tempted to go with Joe Pastry's "Traditional Knish Dough" which does use baking powder but does not require kneading. Would you give me your opinion(s) on how to proceed and get that thin dough covering?
I have a sourdough starter and I'm baking tasty sourdough bread regularly. Since I'm handy with making sourdough, I love that I can easily make a batch of dough with no kneading. Now I decided to make knishes and rather than the baking-soda-leavened dough I used my sourdough dough. I did that and the knish had a thick bready wrapper, it was more like a bread roll with a potato filling in the center. I think that "authentic" knishes have a thin dough wrapper.
One possible solution, when I made the knish I rolled out all the dough, spooned all the filling onto the dough in a line, and then rolled it up. I may have rolled it too many times, maybe 2 rolls (layers) would have been plenty. Or I could make the knishes using only one layer of dough, by making individual dumpling style knishes.
Below are just a few of the knish dough recipes I found online.
Serious Eats, Potato Knish Dough, with baking powder
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/03/potato-knish-recipe.html [5]
- 2 1/2 cups (12 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice from 1 lemon
- 1/2 cup water
The Spruce Eats, Knish Dough, no baking powder, but uses cream cheese, and sour cream?
https://www.thespruceeats.com/jewish-meat-knishes-recipe-1136321 [6]
- 8 ounces butter (unsalted, softened)
- 8 ounces cream cheese (softened)
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 3 1/2 cups flour (all-purpose)
- 1 teaspoon salt
Joe Pastry, Traditional Knish Dough, does not use baking powder and says to just mix the ingredients together and "Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough sit for an hour at room temperature to relax and hydrate." https://joepastry.com/2009/traditional_knish_dough/ [7]
Here's a Torta di Patate recipe and the dough is only flour, salt, water, and olive oil. http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/14878/torta-di-patate [8]
Recipe Lion, Knish Dough, no baking powder
- https://www.recipelion.com/Savory-Pies/KNISH-DOUGH [9]
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup cooking oil
- 3/4 cup lukewarm water
- pinch salt
- dash pepper
- 3 to 4 cups flour
Thin-dough covered knishes
Let the comparison experiments begin.