Refrigerator dough.

My bread machine cookbook includes recipes for two different refrigerator doughs, each with a set of recipes using the ready-made dough in the fridge into a variety of different snacks, meals, and breads.  I had heard of this particular timesaving technique before but never really used it.  This week, with even less energy to make breakfast and lunch than usual, I decided to give it a try.

The first recipe is mostly white flour, with some added fiber, nutrition, and texture coming from added oat bran.  I made it with water instead of with milk because I intended to try to keep it more than a couple of days, and I thought it had a better chance of not spoiling that way.  I always have oat bran around for muffins, so I'm not sure why it took me so long to try this out.  Another time I'll try substituting some whole wheat flour.

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 and 1/2 cups oat bran
• 1 Tbsp yeast 
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 and 1/2 Tbsp sugar
• 2 Tbsp coconut oil
• 1 and 1/2 cups plus 2 Tbsp water

Put in the bread machine on the DOUGH setting, but set a timer to go off after the bread has risen 25 minutes.  Remove the dough.  Transfer to reclosable plastic container coated with cooking spray.  Cover tightly and refrigerate at least 6 hours.

My recipe says "up to two days" but I kept using it for about 4 days and it was fine.  The dough is sticky and moist compared to, say, a pizza dough.  It seemed the easiest way to handle it, at least when making small items like turnovers, was to press it into rounds with your fingers on a greased cookie sheet.

Here is what I made with the dough:

• Little burrito-shaped turnovers, open at the ends, stuffed with fresh chopped broccoli and cheddar, which we ate for lunch next to leftover minestrone soup.  Verdict:  yum. 
• Soft pretzels, which I salted heavily and ate with mustard.  Longtime readers know I am extremely picky about my soft pretzels.  These weren't the best I had ever had, but eating them still hot from the oven was a definite plus. 
• Pizzas for the kids' lunch.  I didn't get to try the pizzas because they disappeared too fast. 
• Little hot apple turnovers for breakfast, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.  These were roundly enjoyed, and something like this may replace cherry bran muffins as my get-up-and-go-morning breakfast.  (I cooked the apple filling -- apples, raisins, sugar, cinnamon, apple juice, corn starch -- in ten minutes on the stovetop the night before, refrigerated it overnight and then reheated it before stuffing and baking the turnovers in the morning).  They were kind of small so I supplemented the grownups' breakfast with some scrambled eggs, but the kids were content to eat the little turnovers.  They were surprisingly un-messy, even eaten out of hand.

Every one of these things were unplanned, last-minute kind of things (except that I decided to do the turnovers the night before, but it was kind of the last minute before bed, which counts in my book).  The dough was maybe a little too savory; the recipe called for less salt, but I reflexively added more because I think every bread recipe in the book is undersalted.  So the hot apple turnovers had a faint saltiness under them, which I actually associated a little bit (not unpleasantly) with McDonald's Fried Apple Pies.  Remember those?  Ahh, I miss them.  The baked ones are so inferior.

Other suggested recipes included "coffee cakes" (looked more like strudely things to me), dinner rolls, calzones, that sort of thing.

I'm not sure I'd want to do refrigerator dough every single week -- the tub took up a lot of real estate in my fridge -- but I give it a thumbs up for speeding up hot lunches and breakfasts during a week when there are a lot of things going on or when you need to take many naps.  If you wind up with too much of it, you can always turn it into dinner rolls.  But if you had a lot of it ready in your fridge, I'd wager you could make a workweek's worth of different breakfast pastries every day without a lot of added work.

Next week I plan to try the other recipe, which is mostly whole wheat plus a little potato starch, and will report back.

Comments

[Cathie B]

You knew I'd comment, didn't you?

This is what I LOVE about the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. I do make a light wheat dough that we use for all the things you mentioned PLUS it makes a great pita (place 5" rounds on pizza stone in preheated 500 degree oven for 5 minutes. Wrap in kitchen towel when removed) or naan (heat up cast iron skillet to very hot. Add butter and rounds of dough. Cook until browned on one side. Pick up dough with tongs, dd a little more butter to pan, turn, and cook until browned on other side. Brush with melted butter).

I just started another 100% whole wheat dough experiment. I'll post results later...

I can't wait to see your whole wheat recipe.

[bearing]

Cathie, I definitely thought about you and your ABI5MAD while I was working with the stuff. The book is still sitting on my bookshelf... I can only manage a few things at a time right now. But if you figure out 100% whole wheat ABI5MAD, I'm ready to learn (my big disappointment from the book being that it contains exactly ONE wholegrain recipe).

Have totally given up soaking flour until I need to take fewer naps.

[Cathie B]

That's okay that you have given up...I stopped making 100% whole wheat during parts of my pregnancy for the same reason.

The next book, due in October, is geared toward whole grains...can't wait for that!