Haunted Halloween Dough Hands Recipe
Rich "dough and behold" Payne is back with a terrifyingly tasty recipe. Rich says "It’s not for the faint of heart and requires a steady hand. I have faith you can do this! So, this is a super fun recipe that kids will love this Halloween, particularly when you launch your haunted dough hands into the pizza oven and they come to life (puff up!)".
- Baker: Rich Payne / Dough & Behold
- IG: @dough_and_behold
- Makes: 6 x 275g dough balls
- Prep time: 20 hrs room temp (21ºc) total proving time.
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Bake time: 60 - 90 seconds in Ooni pizza oven @450ºc
- Flours used: Cotswold Pizza Flour
Haunted Halloween Dough Hands Method
This recipe is specific to these timings and temperatures. 20 hours at room temp (RT) 21°c (Start mixing at 8pm the day before, to bake between 4-6pm the following day - 20hrs in total)
- First off, add 90% of your water to the bowl.
- Crumble all your Fresh yeast into the bowl (Or dried yeast) and whisk gently to dissolve.
- Add all your flour to the bowl
- Turn your mixer on to a slow mixing speed (30-40%) and wait for the ingredients to combine and mix until there are no dry bits. I usually set a timer for 5mins for this.
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Add a little bit more water but not all of it whilst these mixes. ⁃ Once there are no dry bits of flour, cover the bowl and let it rest for 30-45mins. This allows the dough to absorb the water properly and let the gluten begin to develop. ⁃ After around 45 mins, add all your salt into the mixer and all the remaining water. ⁃ Mix at a slow speed to start with while to salt and water is mixed in and then increase the speed a little for a minute or two. When it looks like the dough is becoming smooth, stop the mixer and let the dough rest for about 10 mins.
- After 10 mins, give the dough other mixes for around 5 minutes. If at the end of this your dough feels nice and smooth, then take it out of the mixer.
- If the dough still looks a bit lumpy, let it rest and repeat this process one or two more times until you are happy. You will notice how the dough becomes smoother as you let it rest.
- Once happy with your dough, place it onto a clean work surface and gently shape it into a ball. You can use a dough scraper to kind of push it along your work surface to develop surface tension, so you end up with a nice, tight, smooth dough ball.
- Place this Dough ball in a lightly oiled container with a lid.
- Leave out at room temp overnight to bulk prove.
- At 8am the next morning, empty the dough from your container out onto a work surface and divide it into 6 x 275g dough balls.
- Weigh the doughballs to make sure they are all even weights.
- To shape the dough ball grab, it in one hand and fold it into itself a few times to make a tight, smooth ball.
- Once you are happy your dough balls have enough surface tension place them into either a small dough tray with a lid, or for best results at home, I oil an individual breakfast bowl and place the Dough ball inside and cover it with cling film (or even better you can get silicon covers online that mean you use less cling film plastic)
- Once your balls are in the bowls and covered, leave them out at room temp for another 5 hours and you are ready to bake. (You can ball up the night before you go to bed if you want to give your dough balls even longer time to rest) Both methods work well.
Making the haunted dough hands:
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Take one of your 275g dough balls, gently cover it with semola flour until no sticky bits remain and place it on a clean and dry work surface.
- Press out your dough ball into a rectangular shape about 10inches long and 6 inches wide, then, with a pizza cutting wheel, cut out the shape of a hand from the dough rectangle. Try to make it as gnarly and spooky as you can with pointed, sharp fingernails! (Have a watch of the accompanying Reel on Instagram & YouTube to see how it’s done)
- Once you have carved out your hand, using your food-safe paints and a fine paintbrush, paint the fingernails red (or any colour you prefer). I went for red as it felt nice and spooky! I also painted extra spots of blood dripping from the nails and all over the hands, and the bottom of the hand where it has been severed from its ghoulish dough body! (I’m sat here writing this as home chuckling to myself at how creepy this sounds. Never thought I’d be writing a recipe like this out!)
- That’s it! Once you've painted your hands, gently slide them onto a pizza peel and launch into your pizza oven on full flame 430º - 450ºc (if you have an electric Ooni Volt 2, 430ºc) in 60-90 seconds the hands will puff up a treat in your oven. Remove them when you are happy with this! If you don't have a pizza oven, then using a baking steel at the highest temperature in your home oven will still work, it will just take a few minutes longer, and the same results can be achieved using the frying pan method too! Check out my frying pan pizza vid on the Cotswolds website)
- Now, once your devilishly delicious hands are ready you can serve them on a plate along with some spooky dips like a hot chilli mayo dip, melted mozzarella, or even better, a nice baked camembert! Either way, watch your kid’s faces light up as they break a finger off and munch on this fiendish finger shaped goodness!
