TOP 4 recipes with photos of gingerbread dough at home in different ways. Tips and secrets of chefs for making gingerbread dough. Video recipes.
"Gingerbread" comes from the word "spicy". Therefore, the process of their preparation involved the addition of aromatic spices and spices. Thanks to this, the gingerbread dough turned out to be tasty, tender and with a rich aroma. A huge plus of gingerbread dough is that it can be stored well without freezing in the refrigerator, where it can lie for up to 2-3 weeks. Therefore, you can prepare it in advance and use it as needed. And you can cook from this dough not only ordinary gingerbread cookies of different sizes, but also a gingerbread house and gingerbreads with a filling.
Gingerbread Dough Tips & Secrets
- There are two types of gingerbread dough: raw and custard. In the first option, the products are mixed with each other, and in the second, honey is heated in a mixture with water and oil before adding flour and other components. In this case, the spices are added to the hot mixture and give the maximum aroma. Both raw and choux pastry should be plastic and not too sticky.
- The first spice added to the gingerbread dough was honey. Later, other spices were added to the gingerbread dough mixed with honey. First of all, this is cinnamon, cloves and ginger.
- The tradition of making dough with spices for all peoples is different. In Russia, honey dough was made with rye flour and berry juice, in Great Britain, gingerbread was invented, and in Central Europe, allspice was added to the dough.
- Gingerbread is usually thin and brittle. During baking, they do not grow in size and retain their shape. Therefore, different figures are made from gingerbread dough, like decorations on a Christmas tree.
- In addition to ginger, cinnamon and cloves, nutmeg, coriander, cardamom and even allspice are also added to the dough. Sometimes cocoa or orange peel is added to baked goods.
- Gingerbread cookies on dough mixed with natural honey have a pleasant hue and smell of honey. It is advisable to choose fragrant honey of dark varieties.
- In any gingerbread dough, you can do without sugar. This ingredient is optional.
- Soda is used as a baking powder, but often a few tablespoons of strong aromatic alcohol are added to honey. Such a dough does not increase much during baking.
- For gingerbread, you can use flour of the first and even second grade, and not just the highest grade. Although confectioners claim that the most delicious gingerbreads are obtained from the cheapest flour.
- For real gingerbread, only natural products are taken, such as butter, heavy cream or thick sour cream. Do not use vegetable fats, margarine, or spreads for the dough.
- The dough is rolled out with a rolling pin and figures are cut out with molds. Thin small gingerbread cookies are baked at 200-220 ° C for 5-7 minutes. The larger the products, the longer the baking time. Gingerbread should be baked well, but it is not necessary to bake for a very long time, otherwise the taste will deteriorate.
Choux pastry
Real gingerbread dough made from choux pastry without added sugar or molasses, honey and butter. Products made from it are tasty, soft and tender.
- Caloric content per 100 g - 398 kcal.
- Servings - 20
- Cooking time - 30 minutes
Ingredients:
- Flour - 3 tbsp.
- Vodka - 2 tablespoons
- Eggs - 2 tbsp.
- Butter - 60 g
- Flower or meadow honey - 1 tbsp.
- Spices - 1 tsp your choice (ginger powder, ground cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, vanilla)
- Baking powder - 10 g
Making gingerbread choux pastry:
- For the gingerbread dough, place a large bowl in the steam bath. Put butter and honey in it. Stirring constantly, heat the mass over medium heat until the products are completely dissolved.
- Add sugar, baking powder, spices to a bowl and pour in vodka. The mass will immediately turn white, begin to foam and increase in volume.
- In a separate bowl, beat the eggs lightly and, while stirring, add to the hot gingerbread mixture. The mass will settle down a little at first, but then it will become lush again.
- Remove the dishes from the heat, add flour and knead a plastic and elastic dough that will keep its shape. Add another 0.5 tbsp if necessary. flour.
- Note: any gingerbread dough must be rinsed well so that the products in it are evenly distributed until completely homogeneous. Active kneading with your hands can take 10 to 40 minutes. The better the dough is rinsed, the fluffier and softer the gingerbread will be.
Raw dough
Making raw dough is a real work of art. As a result of such a creative process, the dish turns out to be delicious and you can make a product from it that resembles a charming New Year's house.
Ingredients:
- Flour - 3 tbsp.
- Honey –3/4 tbsp.
- Eggs - 1 pc.
- Chopped spices - 0.25 tsp
- Oil - 100 g
- Sour cream - 100 g
- Water - 0.25 tbsp.
Raw dough preparation:
- Put honey, butter and egg in a container. Grind everything thoroughly and add honey.
- Then add your chosen spices so that the gingerbread has a fragrant smell and taste.
- Mix the resulting mass well for 2-5 minutes.
- Then add the sour cream and then the sifted flour. If you use soda to loosen the dough, then pre-mix it with flour, sift through a fine sieve and then add to the products.
- Knead the raw gingerbread dough, which should not be too steep.
- Note: half a serving of sour cream in this recipe can be replaced with 0.5 tsp. soda to loosen the dough better. For the same result, sometimes vodka is added, but then you need to reduce the amount of water. In this case, 2 tablespoons of vodka is enough.
Ginger dough
Gingerbread cookies, unlike others, will not become dense or crunchy when removed from the oven. Therefore, it is difficult to determine the readiness of the products. As a rule, if the gingerbread has risen and is browned around the edges, then it is ready.
Ingredients:
- Wheat flour - 300 g
- Rye flour - 200 g
- Butter - 200 g
- Yolks - 4 pcs.
- Honey - 150 g
- Sugar - 150 g
- Ground ginger - 2 tsp
- Carnation - on the tip of a knife
- Cinnamon and cardamom - 0.5 tsp each
- Salt - a pinch
- Ground nutmeg - pinch
Gingerbread dough preparation:
- Melt butter with honey and sugar in a water bath. At the same time, make sure that the mixture does not boil.
- Add spices to a homogeneous mass: ginger, cloves, cardamom, coriander, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Mandatory ingredients are ginger and cinnamon, add the rest of the spices to your taste.
- Add baking soda to the butter-honey mixture and stir quickly so that it does not start to be extinguished in the honey.
- Cool the prepared mixture to room temperature, then add the yolks to it.
- Stir the food and add the sifted rye and wheat flour.
- Knead the dough well. At first glance, it may seem too liquid, but do not add flour. Wrap the gingerbread dough in a plastic bag or plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. After cooling, the dough will become denser.
- Note: Many chefs claim that the most delicious gingerbread cookies are obtained if the dough is left in the refrigerator for at least 5 days after cooking.
Gingerbread dough with burnt
Burnt will give the dough a caramel flavor and a touch of gingerbread. At the same time, gingerbread dough acquires good results when adding various ground dried spices in powder and grated nuts. Therefore, you can experiment with this recipe.
Ingredients:
- Flour - 450 g
- Butter - 50 g
- Eggs - 1 pc.
- Sugar - 260 g per dough, 20 g for burnt
- Water 100 ° С - 100 g
- Soda - 1 g
- Baking powder - 2 g
- Citric acid - 1 g
- Ground spices (cinnamon, coriander, allspice, star anise, black pepper, ginger) - 1, 5 tsp.
Cooking gingerbread dough with burnt:
- Prepare a scorch. To do this, pour sugar into a thick-bottomed saucepan, distribute it evenly over the bottom, and put it on the stove, turning on medium heat. Heat the sugar until it darkens and turns black. When the sugar stops boiling, pour in boiling water and stir well so that the sugar crystals completely dissolve, and you get a dark black liquid.
- Next, brew. Mix the whole burnt with sugar. The mixture will be too thick, but the sugar will melt quickly and the mixture will become thinner. Send it over low heat and cook so that the sugar is completely dissolved, while the syrup should not boil.
- Remove the syrup from the heat, add 1/3 of the flour and stir. Cool the mass to 40 ° C and knead a tough dough. To do this, combine the tea leaves with the remaining flour, baking soda, baking powder, citric acid, butter, and an egg.
- Knead the finished dough well and bake the gingerbread.
