Choco Banana muffins - easiest and most delicious muffins, new post after many moons

Yep, no talking about where I have been, what I have been doing, how glorious  my summer was, and the current weather now that it has turned into colorful autumn, and yada, yada, yada... Today it is all about cutting to the chase directly. Some day, when I am able to sit down, relax and write a mile long story, I will share all the good, bad & ugly of the missing months if you are interested. Life has been busy and full and I am not able to spend the time I would like to with my blog baby. I came back from the hiding due to the overwhelming response to my muffin picture on FB last week and all the requests I received to share the recipe. I sincerely think these super delicious muffins will make up atleast in part for all the unaccounted absence. And if you haven't heard, chocolate makes everything better :-) And yes, baking happened in the Sattvaa kitchen after many moons too..

A banana muffin is good and tasty but a choco-banana muffin is better and soul satisfying. If you haven't had one, I implore you to try this at your earliest.  This is such an easy recipe that delivers the softest, most moist and delicious muffins every time (and I should know as I baked 2 batches in a week). So DD was home a week ago for a short weekend and while I cooked stuff for her to carry, I also baked these muffins for her and her group of hungry friends. I had forgotten the blissful feeling that baking awakens in me until the aroma from the banana started to waft through the kitchen. The gooey chocolate, soft & moist muffins that came out of the oven just 12 mins after they went in were some of the best muffins that I have tasted ever.

As DD packed the entire batch to take with her, I decided to bake another batch just 2 days later so I could take some to work for my coworkers. The entire box of about 20 muffins was gone by the end of the day.

This recipe is tweaked from Nigella Lawson's original recipe. I skipped the eggs, used coconut oil in place of vegetable oil and added chocolate chips additionally. The texture is super light and moist. I don't like the taste of very ripe bananas personally, I use them up when they are just soft. These impart the best flavor in breads and muffins. When I posted the teaser picture on FB last week, one of the readers asked me about the variety of the bananas, I only use the the chiquita bananas as they are easily and widely available here, these are very similar to the variety called pacha bale hannu in kannada which have a green skin when unripe that turns a golden yellow and starts to develop black spots as the fruit ripens. You can use other ripe bananas as long as they are soft. As the size varies with the variety I have specified the quantity of the mashed banana in cups as well, hope this helps. The recipe below is for about 18 good size muffins but I also made them slightly smaller (for my health conscious yet sweet toothed colleagues) and got 24 muffins.

Feel free to add nuts of choice to make it more nutritious.

PS: Thanks for all the support, just when I think that nobody really misses me if I didn't blog, you guys pour your love and ask me for a recipe or leave a comment to say how you liked one of my recipes. Your love & support makes me come back even after an awkward gap on the blog :-). I will see you again with another delicious recipe as soon as I am able to.

PPS: I have another work related travel coming up next week and will be missing Deepavali at home. Here is an early Deepavali wish to all of you celebrating the festival of lights, may the festival usher in good times where people treat each other with love and respect. May Deepavali bring in the light to fill in every life with hope, joy and prosperity. 

What do you need to make the muffins? 
Recipe source: Nigella Lawson
4 ripe bananas (4 cups of mashed banana)
4 Tbsp coconut oil
1/2 cup brown sugar (reduce it if your bananas are sweet)
1.5 cup AP flour
1 Tbsp vanilla essence
3 Tbsp cocoa powder
3/4 cup unsweetened chocolate chips
1 Tsp baking soda

How do you make muffins? 

• Peel, and mash bananas using a potato masher or with clean hands so there are no pieces left

• In a microwave safe bowl put 1/2 cup of chocolate chips and microwave it for about 2 mins taking it out every 30 seconds to stir.
• Once the chocolates melt, add the coconut oil and mix it in. I use virgin coconut oil and it always stays solid at room temperature, so heating it helps it to become liquid. 

• In a large mixing bowl, take the mashed banana, add melted chocolate+coconut oil, vanilla and mix it well with a whisk. 
• Sift AP flour, cocoa powder & baking powder using a fine sieve into the mixing bowl, this helps distribute baking soda into the batter and not form bitter, untasty lumps. 

• Once the flour is added, mix it all in gently together. Add the remaining chocolate chips to the batter. 
• Line your muffin trays with liners and spoon in a big tbsp+half into each liner. 

• Preheat the oven to 400F and bake for 12minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean. 
• These are best had warm out of the oven but they stay good for couple of days and can be reheated. 

Notes: 

• I used coconut oil as I was out of vegetable oil but liked the texture and the flavor.
• Use good quality chocolate, I sneaked in 2 squares of Ghirardelli dark chocolates and I honestly believe the quality of chocolate makes a difference.

Kugelhopf (Gugelhupf) - eggless but deliciously flaky bread

How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? 

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? 

How do you solve a problem like Maria? 

....

How many of you sit up at the sound (or music) of those words and start to hum along, sing along? One of my favorite movies of all time (I can watch it over and over and over again) - Sound of Music, a true life story of WW times made immortal by Julie Andrews & Christopher Plummer on the big screen. When a total misfit at the convent but very sincere in her ways, music loving Maria comes in to the house of strict, disciplinarian widower with 7 children as a governess, things cannot go well at the beginning with the children refusing to allow any governess to stick around. It is such a beautiful story of love, laughter and music even in the morbid and fearful times of war and uncertainty.

I first read an abridged version of the book when I was in grade school, it was my older brother's 'non-detail (another term for fiction)' book in high school and had always wanted to watch the movie. When I came to study in a convent for the high school years, if there ever was a movie that the nuns would approve of, it was this one :-), though I didn't get a chance to see the movie then, I watched several runs of the adapted school play during the 3 years. The first Christmas season here, strolling the festive looking aisles of the stores, I saw the VHS (video cassettes) displayed prominently (classics always make a come back during the holiday season here, perfect for a gift :-)). With a 2 year old tugging at my knees, although splurging money on movies was not a common thing at the time, I made an exception and indulged myself to buying the cassette. We enjoyed the movie so much and after years of rewind and reruns, it gave up on us and a couple years back, BH bought me a blue ray version of the same :-). Love lives on..

What has Sound of Music got to do with today's recipe? Does it even have anything to do with it at all? Well, if you give me a chance, I will connect the two together :-). In addition to the story, I also fell in love with the beautiful and seemingly endless, snow clad mountains of the little country Austria. If you look up the history of Kugelhopf, it tells you clearly that it is a bread popular in Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, Craotia and Serbia but I chose to conveniently ignore all other countries except for Austria on this recipe :-), sounds totally partial but I am a die hard romantic and also I think Austria clinches ownership of this deliciously buttery, flaky bread because of the following trivia - Gugelhupf was the sweet chosen to represent Austria in the Cafe Europe initiative of the Austrian presidency of the European Union, on Europe Day in 2006. Maybe Maria and the Von Trapp family ate this bread every day with coffee (or was it tea?)..

So now shall we get back to today's recipe? Oh, I guess I was the one running wayward, so let me get myself back here. This recipe came to me as part of the monthly challenges from Eggless baking group. Though I haven't been regular (sorry Gayathri) but trying to bake & post as much as I can given the hectic life right now. As soon as I saw this recipe (I swear that was before I knew the history and its connection to Austria and to Sound of Music :-)), I thought I would make it, for one the amount of butter didn't sound as big as the Austrian mountains and the procedure seemed really simple.

This is an almost 'no-knead' bread, I say almost because you don't plunk the dough on the counter top and start using that familiar back & forth sway motion exercising your biceps. Instead you use a spatula to move the dough around and bring it to a softer, pliable consistency. What I didn't sign up for though was starting off with a hard mass of dough and making it move around in the bowl. It being a Saturday, totally worked in my favor. BH was up after a good night's sleep and was game for helping me out, we took turns turning the dough (he did it for 3 mins and I took the next 30 secs, then back to him and so on.., you get the picture :-)) and as always great team work produces great results.

Bottom line, get the spouse to help you around when making this bread, save yourselves a sore arm later in the day :-).

I used the measurements Gayathri gave but added a few things to make it bit more livelier. I did the conversions from the gms to cups since I do not own a kitchen scale and was a little apprehensive that my measurements may not have been accurate but they were on the mark. The bread is mildly sweet, deliciously flaky with a super texture. I served it with a spoon of orange marmalade on the side as an after dinner dessert for cousins visiting us yesterday. Our little 1 year old niece seemed to enjoy it as did her parents and brother :-).

What do you need to make Kugelhopf? 
3 & 1/3 cups All purpose flour
2 & 1/4 Tsp instant (rapid rise) yeast
1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup + 1 Tbsp milk
2/3 cup butter milk
7 Tbsp butter (softened to room temperature)
1/2 Tsp salt
1 Tbsp raisins
1/4 Tsp cinnamon powder

How do you make Kugelhopf? 

• Add flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl. 

• With a spoon or fork mix well and make a hole in the center. 
• Add milk & butter milk into the hole and gently fold in the flour mixture. 

• You will get a lightly moist, crumbly mixture.
• Add the softened butter and mix everything together. 
• The dough will be a stiff lump at this stage. 

• Keep moving/mixing the dough with a spatula for 5-7 minutes until the texture softens. 
• Add cinnamon powder and raisins and give a mix. 

• Smear soft butter to the inner side of a tube or bundt cake pan. 
• Put the soft dough in it and level gently. 

• Cover it with a cling wrap and let it rise for 45mins to an hour or until it doubles in volume and looks light and poofy. 

• Preheat the oven to 375F, bake the bread for 30-35 minutes (mine took 35min to reach the golden brown all around)
• Take it out and let it stand on a wire rack for 5 mins before removing it from the pan. 

• Let it cool completely before slicing. 
• Enjoy it with a drizzle of honey or butter or a jam.  

 Notes: 

• Original recipe didn't have cinnamon or raisins, it is my addition. Feel free to skip, however they enrich the bread
• I added 1 Tbsp additional milk since the dough seemed very hard when I started to move it with the spatula initially. This could have been due to the consistency of my yogurt as I didn't thin it down rather used the home made yogurt by just whisking it with a fork. 
• Watch the oven towards the end of the bake time as oven temperatures differ. 

Nuttery Buttery brownies - no eggs in this otherwise rich version

I have tried to stay away from the numerous groups of foodies online trying to cook to a theme, creating a dish out of special ingredient or cooking statewise food and many such wonderful experiments only because of time constraints. Not that I don't cook anymore but I just am not sitting down regularly to blog about it. Life seems to be on the fast track with no brakes, but the journey is what matters and I am having a blast. Will be more regular at blogging in a few months :-)

Having said that, I couldn't resist Gayathri's Eggless baking challenges which she re-opened up a month or so ago. I have seen her decadent baked goodies and have been in awe of how she figures out a perfectly eggless recipe for an otherwise much known eggy recipe. My baking love is extensively with breads as the process of mixing and kneading the dough to perfection relaxes me but I shy away from the more decadent, richer, sweet baked goods except on occasions as I don't normally use a lot of fat in my daily cooking nor are we as a family very fond of baked sweets. But then there is an exception for everything and a time for making exceptions, right?

I signed up with eggless baking group last month but didn't find the time nor the overwhelming desire to make the recipe as it seemed too rich, then the month rolled on, a new recipe was given to the group and not only did it look delicious but also seemed doable to me. And then the weekend happened, I had folks to share the richness with, so ventured in and made this eggless, dark chocolate, nut laden brownie today and can declare it as a successful bake. I blindly followed Gayatrhri's suggested egg replacements barring a minor change, result is a keeper brownie that is on the cake-y side.

And there was an occasion to bake this brownie too. BH & DD had been out of town travelling south from home for the last 4 days and then when they came back, BH got a couple of shot glasses (did I ever tell you, I collect shot glasses? just something I love to pick up from places we visit as a memento) and also got a dark chocolate guitar (totally edible), a super cutesy thing (DD said 'eeww' in a loud voice when she saw it and declared we were the weirdest set of parents one could have :-)) which I don't have the heart to break and consume. So it is all wrapped up pretty and sitting primly in the refrigerator. But as he handed me that guitar, I had the urge to make this brownie and take a picture with it so I could share on the blog (once a blogger, always a blogger and a foodie sees food in everything).

Reason #2, the recipe called for dark chocolate and I had this bag of superlicious Ghirardelli chocolates in the refrigerator that I had picked up sometime in December when I saw them during the holiday season and couldn't resist. I had no idea what I would make with them but since Ghirardelli is one of my favorite chocolates, I thought I would make good use of them some day.

So, with all the ingredients at hand, and Gayathri's accurate egg replacements, I whipped a batch of the brownies in under an hour (baking takes 35mins while prep takes about 10mins) and I was khush, so were everyone that ate it. I have a few packed up to take to work tomorrow.

I used regular home made yogurt instead of sour cream but kept all liquid to flour proportions same as the original recipe. This cakey brownie didn't miss eggs at all and it is a rich treat for any occasion. I would personally reduce the sugar to 3/4 cup next time as I like it a little less sweet. Other than that, this is a keeper.

Engage your spouse to be a helper in the kitchen but watch all the spoons and whisk if he is a chocolate lover like mine as they get licked off clean without any need for washing :-), the batter is delicious!

What do you need to make eggless brownies? 
1+1/4 cup all purpose flour/maida
1/2 cup or 1 stick (US measure) butter
1 cup good quality baking dark chocolate chips
3 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup yogurt
1/4 cup milk
2 Tsp vanilla essence
1/2 Tsp baking soda
1/2 Tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped mixed nuts (I used slivered almonds, pine nuts and pecans)

How do you make brownies? 

• Preheat oven to 350F, line an 8 inch cake pan with a parchment paper.
• Put butter & chocolate chips in a glass bowl, microwave for 1-1.5 minutes until they melt in. 

• Stop at 1min and give it a mix. 
• Add vanilla essence and cocoa powder and mix in until homogeneous. 

• Sieve the flour, salt & baking soda together and keep aside. 
• In a large bowl, take yogurt, milk and sugar and whisk until they blend in (1-2 mins with a hand held whisk)
• Add the melted butter, chocolate mixture and give a good mix. 
• Add the flour mixture little by little and mix it in well without any lumps or dry powder. 

• Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and smoothen the top surface. 
• Sprinkle chopped nuts generously on top and bake for 30-35 minutes. 

• The center of my brownie collapsed a little but was cooked completely. 
• Take it out as soon as a tooth pick pushed in the middle comes out without a gooey sticking batter. 
• As it cools, the brownie becomes a little more solid. 

• Cut into shapes and serve. 

Notes: 

• This is a cake like brownie and not fudgy. 
• Do not wait for the tooth pick to be clean completely before taking out of the oven or it becomes very crumbly. 

Linking this to Gayathri's Fun with Egg Free Baking event

Zucchini muffin - Piccoli Dolci (Little dessert treats), read the post for relevance :-)

Since I threw in Italian verbiage out there in the post title, let me explain what it means and how it relates to what I have today. No, I haven't visited Italy (very much on my bucket list) and have not been going to any language classes either. We do like Italian food and favor Olive Garden franchises for their fresh baked bread and minestrone soup that comes with a side of a big bowl of salad. But what I love most is the decadent Tiramasu after the food, so always keep some place for it. Last time we went to this restaurant, we were all hungry and ended up gorging on the salad, bread and the entrees so dessert was out of question (well, almost). As we looked at the dessert menu, the thing that caught my attention was this new phrase, 'Piccoli Dolci' and really enticing pictures of cute, small size desserts - layered cake, mousse, pastry creams and berries, sounds delicious? ofcourse. Piccoli Dolci means small cakes or little dessert treats in Italian. I made the big sacrifice of not ordering my usual Tiramasu and asked for a Piccoli Dolci. The dessert was small, served in a cup about the size of tea candle holders, and perfect for a sweet craving. Smaller the size, smaller the guilt. Yum!!

Why do I have that phrase in my post title today? I am not serving you any Italian desserts but I liked the way the phrase sounded and wanted to use it somewhere on the blog :-). When I was making these muffins, I ended up using the tiny muffin liners (or holders in my case) and made them 'one gulp' size. It is little, it is a dessert, so there you go.

On to the recipe itself, though the title says, zucchini muffins, zucchini is just one of the ingredients in it. This moist and deliciously sweet muffin is loaded with so much of tropical flavors and goodness that I was going to call it my 'tropical muffin' :-). But wanted to keep the original name and titled it zucchini muffins.

I harvested 2 more zucchinis over the weekend, now that I have a whole lot of recipes with zucchinis, I am just grateful for the bounty. What is better is that DD is not bored (not yet) of zucchinis, me thinks I can get away with feeding her the same vegetable over and over as long as I cleverly disguise it in different forms, shapes and tastes :-). So, the saga of zucchinis continues.

Last week when I shared a zucchini with a colleague at work, she made these muffins and brought them for me and the rest of the group to taste the next day. They were delicious with a flavor explosion in the mouth. You know what happened next, don't you? I asked (may be pestered) for the recipe and got it. Armed with fresh zucchinis, this recipe was the first thought and since we were planning to visit our little nephew and niece, I went ahead and made a batch. Given the size of individual muffins I made, I ended up getting almost 30 muffins, believe me when I say they are perfect size for kids and adults alike. I halved the original recipe and made it egg free by using my trusted egg replacement. See below for details. Thanks M for the delicious recipe. Never imagined zucchini in such a treat.

I took some to share with my Chinmaya kids today, they all loved it and polished off the mini muffins. I also heard back from the cousins that they enjoyed the muffins too. So I changed my blog post plan a tiny bit and ended up writing about the muffins instead of what I had planned before :-).

This recipe incorporates a lot of fruity flavors but the end result is surprisingly homogeneous with all of them playing together synchronously. You have bites of fresh pineapple and craisins(dried cranberries) in addition to the nutty flavor from coconut. Very easy to put together and yummy to relish.

What do you need to make zucchini muffins? 
1.5 cup All purpose flour
1 cup sugar (reduce it by 1 Tbsp if you want it mildly sweet)
1/2 cup canola oil
3/4 cup grated zucchini
1/3 cup unsweetened apple sauce (this is my egg replacement, 1 egg=1/4 cup AS)
2 Tbsp fresh orange juice
1/2 Tsp vanilla essence
1  Tsp orange zest
1/2 Tsp baking soda
1/8 Tsp salt
1/2 Tsp freshly ground cinnamon
1/3 cup coconut flakes (I used the sweetened variety)
3 Tbsp chopped pineapple
1/2 cup craisins or raisins - chopped roughly

How do you make zucchini muffins? 

• Grate zucchini and keep aside. 
• In a mixing bowl, put sugar, apple sauce, orange juice, orange zest, vanilla and oil and mix it for 2 mins with a whisk or fork. Do not expect it to become creamy but aim to get a homogeneous mixture of ingredients. 

• Sift the flour, salt, cinnamon powder and baking soda together and fold it into the wet mixture in the bowl. 

• Add the coconut, pineapple, craisins/raisins and grated zucchini

• Give a good mix to combine all ingredients, spoon them into individual muffin containers.
• Preheat the oven to 325F and bake the muffins for about 20 minutes (watch them closely during the last couple of minutes as oven temp vary a lot). 
• Mine took 20 minutes and the tooth pick inserted in the middle came out clean. 

• Take them out and let cool a little bit before serving. 

Notes: 

• You can replace orange juice with pineapple juice if you prefer. 
• I am thinking (not tried yet) that you can replace zucchini with bottle gourd gratings. 
• Original recipe baked this mixture as a loaf and suggested a bake time of 50 minutes, muffins bake much faster. 

Chocolate Babka muffins for Baking Partner's challenge and a BIG FAT alert :-)

Yayy!! I made it, middle of the week and I came home and baked and more importantly I am blogging about it. I just didn't want to ask Swathi for extension one more time :-). Well, if you follow my blog, you know today being the 15th of the month, it is time for a team of home bakers to bake and present a selected recipe. Swathi gave us 2 choices this time, I already have a carrot cake on the blog (which I think is the best ever carrot cake :-)), so chose to make these chocolate Babka muffins. They looked cute and adorable and ofcourse highly fattening with oodles of butter every step of the way. This fares at the top of the list of my 'most calorie dense' recipes so far on the blog.

All you health conscious people, before you go away trying to calm that pounding heart of yours, let me tell you the silver lining(s) of my version of the recipe. Well, I wish I could claim it was butterless, sugarless, eggless muffin like I always do :-), Alas, no such luck this time, it is eggless though (first silver lining if you are allergic to eggs or just don't like them) and I cut the butter by a third and sugar by a third. Given that this is a brioche type of dough, that reduction in butter and given that it is meant to be a cake, that reduction of sugar speak volumes about my concern for your health and mine too. I am misleading you here a little bit and intentionally too, here is the real story, I have not actually reduced butter or sugar from the main recipe but just chose not execute one part of the recipe. I cut some corners and did not add the streusel topping the original recipe called for. Swathi, I hope this still qualifies for the baking partner's challenge :-). If any of you are thinking that you missed out on the full blown buttery babka, let me assure you that is not the case and if it is any consolation the streusel topping didn't particularly look pretty :-) either, so nothing lost there..

What came out of the oven was most definitely delicious, buttery sweet, oozing melted chocolate, dreamy babkas which made the kitchen smell like Cinnabon's store front (if they were making fresh cinnamon buns that day in that location!) on a lazy weekend morning and made me a very happy baker. Thanks Tammy for suggesting the recipe, it is a keeper and I will make it again as long as I can find people to share it with.

My wiki knowledge about babka are that they are of Ukrainian origin, made sweet or savory (potatoes) with a really rich dough and served during Easter celebrations. They are also baked as loaves which you can slice up and slather some more butter on and enjoy. I liked the mini versions (not really mini as they grew in size, if you want small servings, make 18 pieces from the same dough).

This is a really simple and easy recipe, if you don't count the wait times, the actual hands on time is really small. So you can prepare it in between your other chores. I do not believe that the baked muffins have a long shelf life but you can freeze the rolled log in the refrigerator and and bake them fresh as needed. You just need to keep it out for a couple of hours for it to come to room temperature before baking.

DD has been working on a project for school and I gave her a mommy lecture about effects of procrastinating when I came home this evening only to be given a little reverse lecture from her later in the night as she found me scrambling to take the pictures on the day the post was due on the blog :-), that sets the score even for now and we can go back to being the happy mommy & daughter again (until next time that is..).

I have used unsweetened apple sauce as the egg replacement in this recipe. If you really want to know the streusel topping, you can refer to other baking partner's posts for details.

What do you need to make Babka muffins?
Recipe source 
Dough ingredients: 

1/2 cup warm milk (warm it to 110 degrees if you own a thermometer)

1/4 cup sugar

2 Tsp instant (rapid rise) yeast

1/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce (my replace for 1 large egg)

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 Tsp salt

3 Tbsp unsalted butter at room temperature

Filling ingredients:

3/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 Tsp freshly ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
3 Tbsp unsalted butter at room temperature

How do you make Babka muffins?
Dough preparation:

• Using a stand mixer, combine warm milk, sugar, yeast and blend a couple of times.
• Add the apple sauce, flour and salt and mix until a sticky dough begins to form.
• Add the butter and mix in until well blended.
• Knead the dough for 10 minutes until it is soft and supple. It will still be quite loose in texture - do not add additional flour.

• Put the kneaded dough in a buttered :-) or oiled bowl, cover and let it rest until it doubles in volume. It will take a couple of hours.

Filling preparation:

• Put all ingredients except butter in a blender and blend it until chocolate chips are broken into tiny crumbs and mostly powdery.
• Add butter and blend it till it comes together.
• Keep aside until ready to use.

Making Babka muffins:

• Line a muffin tray (makes 12 muffins) with paper liners.
• Preheat the oven to 350F.
• Turn over the dough on to the working area, press it gently to deflate, let it rest for 5 minutes.
• Using dry flour, roll the dough into a thin rectangle of about 12X20 inches.

• Spread the filling evenly all over the top of the rectangle. 
• Starting from one end, roll it into a tight log.

• Cut with a sharp knife into 12-1 inch pieces. 
• Place them into the prepared muffin pans, cover with a tea towel and let it rise for about 30 minutes. 

• Bake for 15-20 minutes or until it is poofy and starts to brown at the edges. 
• Take it out onto the cooling rack and let cool or enjoy them warm :-)

These Babka muffins are going to a party with the rest of the Baking partners here.. 

Notes: 

• The dough is easily made in a stand mixer, it is a little difficult to handle manually because of the amount of butter and the consistency of the dough. As long as you can successfully curb the urge to add more dry flour to make the dough manageable, go ahead and do it the old fashioned way using your own hands.