Gingerbread dough is essentially made from bicarb, cinnamon, ginger, salt, butter, egg, and flour and sweetened with brown sugar, syrup, or honey.
When making gingerbread dough, you have to get the right consistency. Too moist and it doesn’t roll out nicely and too dry and it becomes crumbly, cracking during baking.
Ginger has always been a popular spice
Ginger has been around for literally centuries, with ancient tribes using it as a medicinal root. By the middle ages, the spice was used throughout Europe, being looked upon as the rich man’s spice, with aristocratic cooks experimenting with it.
Listed as a herb and a spice, ginger is found in many culinary recipes. Even Queen Elizabeth I tried out a gingerbread recipe and presented visiting dignitaries with gingerbread men made in the likeness of the dignitaries.
- Attempt a gingerbread house with the right consistency
Today, gingerbread men and other shaped cookies are sold all over the world. When you consider that in December 2001, Polish bakers attempted to beat the Guinness Book of World Records by making the biggest-ever gingerbread house, you know the consistency has to be right.
The house was made with 4000 loaves of brick-shaped gingerbread, 6000 eggs, 550 pounds of shortening, and a ton of flour. The bakers obviously got the consistency of the gingerbread dough right.
Too dry and crumbly, and the entire house would have come tumbling down. But we need to know what could make gingerbread dough so crumbly in the first place.
Gingerbread Dough Too Crumbly
- You’ve put in too much flour
You may have made the mistake of adding too much flour to the dough mixture, and of course, this will just make it too dry and not capable of being molded into shape. Adding too much flour is a common mistake that is easy to fix.
You can fix the problem by adding more liquid, such as milk or water. You can also try adding fat to soften and bind the dough. Don’t add too much at once. Begin by adding one teaspoon of the fat you used, such as butter, and then knead it with your hands to prevent overmixing.
If the dough seems to be drying out, add another teaspoon of butter until the dough reaches the right consistency.
So the best way to fix gingerbread dough that has too much flour and is too dry is to simply add more milk, water, eggs, or fat to the dough. Add the fat or extra liquid in small amounts at a time and watch how the consistency changes.
- Over-mixed dough
When you add all of the ingredients to your mixing bowl and begin blending, the flour begins to develop gluten. As you continue to mix, the dough becomes dryer and harder. It’s the gluten developing more, which results in hard, dry dough.
Overmixing generates a lot of heat, which affects the yeast. The gluten becomes stronger as you mix, and then it actually breaks down and your gingerbread pastries just collapse. The solution is to knead the dough briskly until it is smooth and springy.
Good gingerbread biscuits have nice soft centers, and they’re like that because you didn’t overwork the dough. When over-mixed and rolled too much, the gingerbread men or cookies lose this softness and become tough and dry instead.
- You’ve added too much salt
Some people choose to bake with fine sea salt, saying that if you choose iodized salt, you should decrease the amount of salt by half. Gingerbread doesn’t require much salt as it is, and too much salt absorbs water.
When you add too much salt to your gingerbread dough, it absorbs the water inside, drying it out and ultimately causing your biscuits or gingerbread men to crumble. Make sure to stick to the recipe you have and to measure the salt accurately.
- Don’t experiment indiscriminately
In fact, you need to follow the recipe carefully because measuring incorrectly can result in the entire recipe being flawed. For instance, if your recipe is in grams and you only measure in ounces, you can get the measurements entirely wrong.
Also, substituting butter for margarine can also alter the recipe because margarine only has a small amount of fat compared to butter. Fat, such as butter, is an essential ingredient in gingerbread dough as it binds the ingredients, making the dough nice and moist.
- Gingerbread dough has dried out in refrigerator
Have you left the gingerbread dough exposed in the fridge so that it dries out? Cold air is enough to dehydrate your dough. If you refrigerate your dough, always make sure that you wrap it up tightly before you refrigerate it.
You also don’t want to leave the dough in the refrigerator for too long either as the ingredients tend to start spoiling after 3 days. If your gingerbread dough has hardened in the fridge, allow it to come to room temperature to soften.
Once you have your gingerbread cookies baked, if you leave the cookies uncovered, just like the dough, they will also dry out and become harder. Store them in an airtight container at room temperature.
Hints on what to do with dry, crumbly dough
You can do research, and you will find that there are always tips provided to ensure your gingerbread cookies turn out the best they can. There are always things that can go wrong with your gingerbread dough, and a common problem is when the dough is too crumbly.
When you try to form your dough into a ball and it falls apart, it is quite possibly too dry. Maybe you added too little butter or too little of the liquid ingredient. It’s a problem that can be easily fixed by simply adding slightly more liquid.
You’ll be glad you persevered with the dough, because the gingerbread treats you make will be a welcome change from chocolate during the holiday season.
Gingerbread cookies can be a wholesome and inexpensive snack to complement the gifts you give your loved ones or to simply enjoy them on their own.