Meatless Friday - Dumplings

Weeks just fly by lately and here is another Meatless Friday Linky Party. Link up if you have some recipes to share... This time I am sharing my grandma's dumpling recipe - yum!

You will need:

1 bag Instant Yeast

2 teaspoons granulated sugar

1/2 cup of warm water

5 1/2 cups of Wondra flour (or Polish Wheat Flour (Krupczatka) or Czech "Polohruba mouka")

Pinch of salt

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups milk

clean cloth
(I have a clean cloth that I use for boiling dumplings only. Please keep it separate, hand wash and air dry it. This way it will also stay fragrance free and it will not give your dumplings extra scent)

First I make the yeast base. Pour bag of yeast, granulated sugar and warm water into a bowl and place in a warm spot to let it rise.

During this time, pour the flour into a bowl and add salt.

You can't use all purpose flour for this but luckily you don't need an European store around to make this recipe. I found Wondra in regular grocery store that works as well! This one is the Polish kind...

In about 20-30 minutes the yeast base should look something like this...

...and that is when you could add it to the flour and salt mix.

Add eggs and milk. Pour the milk slowly and don't add the whole thing right away. Chances are you will not need it all. And it is easier to add then take away...

Mix the dough carefully until you end up with something like this. Cover it and let it rise in a warm place until it doubles in size (it might take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours, depends on the temperature and the dough consistency) 

It should look something like this...

Take the dough out and cut into 2 or 4 pieces. Depends on how big you want your dumplings to be. (My camera battery died so I had to use the phone camera from now on ;-) At this time you could start boiling your water in a large pot.

Now roll the dough pieces. I made 4 smaler rolls.

Use a cloth to keep the dumplings from falling apart in the water during boiling. Boil them for about 12 minutes.

Here I am showing you what happens if you don't use the cloth...

If you don't use the cloth, the dumpling will not hold together neatly, however it will be fine to eat.

My mom taught me how to cut the dumplings using thread. You have to do it while they are still hot, right out of the water. Place them on the counter, slide the thread under, pull up the ends, cross them on top, and pull till the whole dumpling gets cut. This way you will get straight cut dumplings. Knife usually sticks to them and gets them misshaped. 

We enjoy them with white sauce and meat balls!

An InLinkz Link-up