Rolling with the Punches

Cooking from scratch means that every once in a while you’re going to have to get out the ol’ rolling pin. I probably use mine at least two times a week. Just today I used my rolling pin and huge plastic cutting board to roll out dough to make 80 homemade dog bones and 14 hamburger buns.

In the not-too-distant past I would have hesitated to take on two rolling-pin required projects in one day, much less one month. I used to hate rolling out anything. I would never fail to lose complete control of my large cutting board - it would slide all over the darn place. And the more muscle I had to put into kneading or into my rolling pin, the worse it got. How to keep the silly thing still long enough to accomplish anything?

After a bit of thought, I came up with these two ideas. First I tried a latex dishwashing glove underneath my large plastic cutting board. This worked pretty well, expect it didn’t lay too flat (which is not necessarily a big deal). Also it was very cheerful to see my yellow glove waving at me from beneath my cutting board. Somehow this was very encouraging, especially on those occasions when I was dealing with a particularly sticky or stubborn dough.

After a little more thought, I remembered that I had lots of rubber-mat type shelf-liner left over from when I first moved into this house. So that is what I use now. This works really well. I never have a “slideage” problem, plus the cutting board lays perfectly flat. In this house I have corian-type countertops. My new house has granite, so I don’t know yet if this method will work at the new place. But as soon as I find out, I will let you know.

This method also gave me another good idea. Sometimes recipes say “roll out into a 9″ x 13″ rectangle” or something else of the sort. If your cutting board is somewhat see-through as mine is (it is, though it doesn’t look it in this photo) then you can cut a piece of shelf-liner in the desired dimensions to put underneath your cutting board as a template. This kills two birds with one stone - no sliding, and accurate rolling. Plus, if you make a recipe frequently you only have to make the template one time and that is it (I use this idea for cinnamon buns, yum). If you are more the seat-of-your-pants type of chef, then this is not such a big deal, but sometimes I like to have a guide (like when I’m making those cinnamon buns). Taking away the guessing (shape and size-wise) can be a big time-saver when baking.

And now for a word on rolling pins. Mine is a nothing-fancy wooden job that I got at Target many years ago when I was first married. I went for a very long period when I didn’t use it, so it just sat in my large-utensil drawer gathering dust. After a long time of this neglect, I took it out to roll out a pizza crust. Since I hadn’t used it in such a long time I gave it a good scrubbing and patted it dry. Next, I put my pizza dough on the cutting board and energetically applied my rolling pin.

After a bit of rolling, I noticed that my nice dough was covered with lots of dark little specks. At first I thought that maybe there had been bugs in my flour that I hadn’t initially noticed. This made me really mad at myself; I berated myself for being careless with the flour storage. I was certain I would have to throw out all my flour.

Then I realized that it wasn’t the flour, it was the rolling pin. After sitting so long in the drawer it was a little “rusty” on the inside. Every time I rolled it, debris would come flying out from inside the pin and land on my pretty dough. A good soaking in hot soapy water, followed by vigorous rolling on my kitchen counter soon took care of this problem. I had to dump my freshly rolled pizza dough that time but luckily I had doubled the recipe, so I had enough dough for one crust at least. In fact, just to be on the safe side I give my rolling pin a good workout on my kitchen counter before every use. So long black specks, hello money-saving home-baked goodness!