INTRODUCING MY DOUGH BABY

I make many low carb “doughs” and “batters.” I don’t mind a cream cheese and mozzarella biscuit. I actually love breakfast sandwich fillings or jam on my “Not So Oopsie” rolls. (And they’re also good made into “cream cheese danishes”!) I like my crepe recipe—both savory and sweet. But oh for yeast dough! And even more oh for low carb yeast dough…and low carb rolls, low carb pizza dough, low carb cinnamon rolls and more—made out of more “real tasting” flours!

I’m not a fan of some of the doughs available for low carb or healthy bakers. I don’t like trying to pass off a “quick bread” (i.e. in a mug) or with flax and oat fiber as a bread. I don’t like the feel on my teeth (okay, they make me cringe a little) of doughs that are primarily made of cheese (or the flavor or the fat and calorie content!). And I really don’t like the taste of psyllium husk in a batter.

Yes, those doughs and batters are extremely low carb (often low carb/high fat/super calorie dense), which makes them ideal for keto situations. But I haven’t enjoyed them too much.

Add to that the fact that I love to make bread. Not in a coffee mug or out of cheese or eggy-clouds on a cookie sheet. But real bread.

They actually look, taste, and feel like full carb wheat rolls!

Moreover, I like to make dough. Dough that can be kneaded and pounded and shaped and even played with. Dough that can be made into anything I want to for breakfast, lunch, or dinner—pizza, dinner rolls, slider buns, cinnamon bread, wiener wraps, “hot pockets,” danishes, and much more. (There were many, many years when we had seven children at home that we made bread every single morning!)

So for nearly two years now, I have been on a quest to create a flour mix that could be made into a bona-fide low carb yeast dough—out of real wheat flour and yeast. (I know many low carbers don’t eat any wheat products. I know that many people eat gluten-free. But I also suspect that there are enough of us out there who can tolerate wheat when it is sprouted and a little lower in carbs. And I think there are people out there who want to make more traditional yeast products for their family without using flour that is over 100 net carbs per cup!)

Mini loaves and dinner rolls!

So here it is….my labor of love to myself, my family, and anybody else who wants to make a yeast dough that they can go crazy with—at only six to eight net carbs per serving! That number easily fits into a moderate carb diet of 30 to 60 net carbs per day. It is a dough that we can make for our families without super high carb numbers. And it is a dough that is so versatile that I call it my “Pilsbury Crescent Dough” knock off! (Go ahead, try it in recipes calling for a tube of Pillsbury Crescent Dough—it’s amazing!)

Weiner wraps in a pig blanket rising

Now, I have to give a disclaimer or two. It is low carb. It contains sprouted flour. It contains a combination of white and wheat flours. It has gluten and protein powder in it. It isn’t REALLY Pilsbury Crescent Dough. (To get the exact low carb sprouted flours that I use, check out my Amazon shopping list below!)

But it is good. And for low carb, it is great! It is one of the few doughs and batters that my adult kids will eat when they come to dinner. I serve these rolls and loaves all the time. (I even give them away a lot…two years of testing has yielded way more dough than we two empty nesters can eat!)

Breadsticks!

CRESCENT DOUGH DETAILS

There are so many things I want to tell you about this dough. (There actually might be a book in the future with just this dough as its basis!) But this post is going to get super long (sorry!), so I’m just going to detail the things you absolutely must know here—and you can learn more from the pictures and Recipe Keys beneath the recipe—and in future recipes using this dough.

1. The carb counts given are very exact—for the flours that I use (follow the affiliate links), in the amounts that I use the ingredients, divided among 36 servings (three “parts” of dough come from one recipe). If you use other flours, the carb counts will not be the same. (If you make larger servings, it will not be the same!)

2. The carb counts are net carbs—that is, they are grams of carbohydrates minus fiber. If you count gross carbs (before subtracting fiber or stevia, etc.), your carb count will be much higher.

3. This is an enriched dough. That means that it is not simply flour, yeast, and water. It has butter, almond milk, eggs, sweetener, etc. (I tried to tell my kids that it was a healthy ‘King’s Hawaiian Bread,” but they didn’t buy it!) This means that it is richer and denser than traditional non-enriched doughs. The fact that it is an enriched dough, combined with the fact that it is not all flour, means that it will not rise as quickly or even as high as other white breads, for instance. I have tested and tested this to get the best rise that I could get—and I settled in on adding some white sprouted flour to my Sprouted Flour Mix. You could use all Sprouted Flour Mix for a lesser rise and fewer carbs (or all white sprouted flour for a great rise, but much less nutrition and way more carbohydrates.)

4. The wetness of the dough is crucial. This is not a dough that you keep adding flour until you can handle it without it sticking to your hands. You want it to be wet enough to stick to your hands. Don’t over-flour your counter. Put a huge piece of parchment down and spray it with cooking spray. Spray your hands with cooking spray. Add only enough flour as is absolutely necessary. It should be sticky. If you add too much flour, it will not rise well, and it will have a crumbly crumb (!). It still tastes great like this—I love the crumbly version with stew, beans, or soup—but it doesn’t taste or feel like crescent dough then.

5. I will post the recipes that I use this in very soon—but in the meantime, get creative! I have made wiener wraps, sausage bits, ham and cheese roll ups, cinnamon rolls, fried doughnuts, pizza crust, hot pockets, mini loaves, small bread loaves, pizza knots, breakfast pizza, hot dog buns, and much more over the two years that I have tested it.

6. Use this dough according to your purpose and health goals. I can easily eat one or two servings of this every day and still stay in my carb zone. (Note: For thin pizza dough, it is only four net carbs per serving or so! It makes a huge jelly-roll pan of thin crust pizza!)

Amazing Cinnamon Bread! 

Don’t forget to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page for this recipe’s helpful Recipe Keys!

Below are links to the ingredients I use in the recipe above. I am an affiliate for Amazon.com. If you click on the links below I will earn a small commission. Thank you for your support of this blog!

Download my Low Carb Flour Chart, complete with carb and nutrition counts for many different low-carb flours!

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Recipe Keys

Low Carb (LC): The net carbs for this recipe are fairly low per serving (a cinnamon roll for under eight carbs?). However, keto people will likely not be able to use this dough (staying under twenty net carbs usually means non-starchy veggies, meat, cheese, eggs, and a few nuts). If you are longing for “dough” and eat thirty to sixty net carbs per day, give this recipe a try! It might be just the thing that will help you stay on your healthy eating program!

Family-Friendly Low Carb (FFLC): A very family-friendly dough recipe—actually the lowest carb one I have found for the taste and “normalcy” of it.

Store-Bought-Stella (SBS): This is not a quick recipe (though with a Kitchen Aid dough hook, I can have this rising in the bowl in under fifteen minutes!). However, I hope to help Store-Bought-Stellas to be able to cook and bake more and more by using my mixes. Once you make a mix, it is truly like using a store bought mix! I recommend that SBS cooks make the dough twice—and freeze the dough in one-third parts wrapped in parchment and placed down into a freezer bag (one third of a recipe per bag). You will be surprised how much more efficient the time you do spend in the kitchen will become when you have some things in the freezer!

Homemade Hannah (HH): We Homemade Hannah’s are in homemade heaven with yeast dough. What can feel more homemade than bread rising on the counter? Ahhhh….

Freezer Cooking (FC): This dough freezes well after the first rise. Keep in mind that when you defrost it, you will need a long time to get it to room temperature and then a long time to get it to rise. (Cold dough does rise, but it does so very slowly.) Freeze the dough in one-third parts wrapped in parchment and placed down into a freezer bag (one third of a recipe per bag). You can let it defrost in that bag until it is not cold and ready to shape. (You can also let it defrost in the refrigerator overnight or all day.)

Trim Healthy Mama-Friendly (THM) (www.trimhealthymama.com): This recipe is tricky to evaluate in the THM world. It is sprouted, which is normally an E food. However, it is enriched, which could make it an S. It is also low enough in carbs to be an S if you go by carb count only (which THM does not do). Many THM followers eat sprouted bread in an S setting if it stays in the carb levels of an S. So S? Low enough in fat for an E? Cross-over? I would use it in an E (with low fat toppings only) or an S (and slather it with butter!).

Sugar Free (SF): Yes, of course!

Gluten Free (GF): No. My Low Carb Flour Mix is a gluten-free, very low carb baking mix for non-yeast baking. Gluten-free eaters may use it freely. This recipe contains my Sprouted Flour Mix, which has sprouted white flour, sprouted wheat flour, vital wheat gluten, and protein powder. That being said, if you are not celiac but simply avoid gluten as much as you can for other reasons, you might want to make a small recipe of the Sprouted Flour Mix and try it in a small recipe (like a muffin in a mug) to see how you react. Some people do not react as badly to sprouted flours as they do regular flours. (Note: Follow your doctor’s orders, not my suggestions!)

Low Carb Mixes (LCM): Yep! Another of my fantastic mixes! I love baking and cooking with mixes!