Why is my bread dough so sticky and flat?

STOP!! Wait a minute! Don't throw away the dough you've just made because it doesn't look like you think the perfect dough should. Recipes for bread are almost infinitely flexible. Most will even say something like 4 - 5 cups flour. If your dough is sticky add another tablespoon or two of flour and work it in. If your dough is flat, let it rise in a warm place, covered with a tea towel, for an hour or so.

If it's chilly in your kitchen, or you have a cold tile countertop, you may need to find a warm place for the dough to rise. An oven set low at only 100 degrees Fahrenheit will do it in a pinch. If your oven doesn't set that low, turn your slow cooker on low for 10 min and then turn it off and put the dough in it. If needs be, get creative to find a warm spot for it.

If your yeast is old or you have inadvertently killed it (water too hot or some such thing) rolling it out thin makes a killer-good pizza dough.

To knead dough, sprinkle a little flour on a warmed surface. (Set a cake pan of warm water over the area you plan to use for a few minutes before starting, if you have cold -- granite, tile, etc -- counters.) Plop the dough onto the floured area. Squish it flat, fold the edges in, and squish it flat again. Turn the dough 90 degrees, and repeat. Keep doing this until the dough is smooth and elastic. Over-kneading makes dough tough. Under-kneading makes it crumbly and unpleasant. Just-right kneading (smooth and elastic) makes delicious bread.

I've tried to make bread dough in my food processor before now and I've never been able to do it well. I think that it gets over-processed too quickly and you end up with a gloopy mess that you just can't do anything with.

I know it seems daunting but you should really try to make it by hand rather than in a processor.

Kneading isn't really difficult - you just stretch out the dough with the heel of your hand. Keep stretching the dough out and rolling it back up into a ball again. Do this for about 10 minutes until the dough becomes smooth and elastic. I've given you a link to a video on how to knead which you may find helpful :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWj8oHMPFm0

Good luck tomorrow - it's really worth perserving with because home made bread is one of the joys of life. A word of warning though - once you've started to make your own bread it becomes addictive!!

STICKY: You may need a bit more flour, but maybe not. It probably just needs kneading, and a FP won't do this as well asyour hands can (or a KA mixer w/ a bread hook)

FLAT: Did you measure the temp of the water before you added your yeast to it? If not, and it was too hot, you probably killed your yeast, which means it won't rise. The water for yeast-dissolving should be around body temp, but no more than 115ºF.

Don't give up! Kneadyour dough w/ asome flour on yoru clean counter, and it should become smoth and elastic. When that's done, coat it w/ oil in a bowl, cover, and set in a warm place to rise. If it rises, the yeast is fine and you can proceed. If it doesn't buge, just pitch it and try, try again!

It's hard just to make bread.

pratices make perfect

good luck :)

ad more flur when u knead it

add more flour