Troubleshooting: dough is very difficult to roll out/stretch and has lots of small air bubbles at edges
I've been trying to make this recipe for a couple of days now, but I've had trouble with three different attempts:
Turkish Pide Bread - The Orgasmic Chef [1]
I have two problems.
Firstly my dough is very difficult to roll or stretch out flat. It forms into a nice ball OK, but when I pat it down or attempt to roll it out, it springs back immediately to its ball shape. I have tried making it wetter and tried letting it rest 30+ minutes as a ball before I roll it but it still snaps back way too much. I'm not even using high-gluten flour and I don't think I'm over-mixing it (5 mins in a mixer on slow).
Secondly my dough, when I roll or stretch it out, looks really shaggy and has tons of small air pockets and bubbles underneath the surface, and around the edges. When I use a rolling pin I can hear all the air bubbles breaking and escaping at the edges, and as a result I can't get a nice smooth round shape, just a shaggy mess.
I thought I had over-proofed it at first but I let it rise for just 15 minutes before rolling and it still did this!
It looks kind of like this (but worse):
When I want it to look more like this:
This has been a challenge because I thought I knew the basics of good bread making (i.e. don't over-work/over-proof, let it rest, etc.) but it seems I'm still a newbie.
Any advice really appreciated.
EDIT: As a bonus third question, I can never get any of my bread dough looking "white and smooth" like the last picture above. It just doesn't happen! Even in my successful loaves, my dough always looks shaggy and off-white, like I can see the strands of gluten all over it even if I shape it nice and tight. Am I just cursed when it comes to dough?