Why did this dough go so wrong?
I found a recipe online for Calzones that I decided to try. I used my bread machine (which always has done a fine job in the past) on the quick dough cycle. But when the cycle finished, the dough was a goopy mess. I had to literally scrape the dough out of the pan, and knead flour into it...for quite some time, and it was a terribly sticky dough. It literally stuck to everything it touched, everytime I sat it down for a minute. It never got as "stretchy" as I would have liked, but I ended up using it, at least. I would have hate to throw it out, although I was tempted. Here is the recipe, and all my ingredients were fresh. Any ideas?
1 cup water
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups white flour
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1 Tbsp sugar
1 package yeast
weigh first the dough in the bucket and then after removing the dough weigh the empty bucket and subtract it from the total. If might tell you if you forgot a cup of flour when measuring or added too much water. That would be the simplest explanation. The weights can be estimated. Even better if you weigh and take notes while adding in the ingredients one at a time. If the dough tastes too salty (before working in extra flour) it was accidentally forgotten.
Garlic is known to hamper yeast but this sounds like a hydration problem. :)
I've been thinking... you wouldn't have posted if you thought you left something out so lets go back over those fresh ingredients. Is there anything on the list you haven't baked with before? brand new salt, new bag of flour or something? Did the water run thru the water softener?
My first guess is the horrible inexactness of a "cup" measure has struck once again. A "cup" of flour can be as little as 105 grams or as much as 150 grams - that's a lot of variability. For small batches, it can take you all the way from a fairly hard dough to a runny batter. My experience is that recipes that don't give weight measures need some extra attention and usually some "tweaking". Once it comes out right, I write the weight measures right over the recipe so I have them for future use.
My second guess is the recipe creator assumed a particular type (brand?) of whole wheat flour, perhaps one that was ground relatively coarsly and that contained a goodly amount of gluten. Using something very different (for example whole wheat flour that's ground as finely as white flour) could make quite a difference in the dough - you may need to "adjust" the amount of water.
I'm wondering if perhaps the dough was over-mixed. This will break down the gluten and result in a sticky dough with a wet and shiny appearance. The dough will also be warmer than usual because of excess heat from friction buildup of too long or strong a mixing. Do any of these symptoms apply to your dough?
Franko
Mini´s note may be to consider.
I have never had success with adding garlic into the bread dough. Fresh or powder. Although the dough consistency was correct after kneading, it always became very sticky, too soft and almost impossible to work with.
You can try the same dough without garlic and you will see
zdenka