Dumplings

Holiday's with the German part of the family have three rotating dishes:  strudla, kase knoephla, and dumplings.  In my four years of college, I never seemed to make it home for the right holiday, so hadn't had my favorite, dumplings, for several years.  When my sister decided to spend Christmas here with me, the first decision we made was that dumplings would happen for Christmas dinner.

Ingredients:

That's a lot of dough!

Aunt Ruth's Bread Dough

• 3/4 cup warm (not hot) water
• 1 Tablespoon yeast
• 1 Tablespoon sugar
• 4 cups warm water
• 4 Tablespoons sugar
• 2 Tablespoons salt
• 1/4 cup oil
• Flour (roughly 3/4 of a 5 pound bag)

Other Ingredients

• Potatoes, chopped

3 pots of dumplings!

Directions:

Mix 3/4 cup warm water, yeast, and 1 Tbsp sugar well, let sit.

Mix together 4 cups warm water, sugar, salt, and oil with electric mixer.  Add 4-5 cups flour, mixing constantly.  Add yeast mixture.  Continue adding flour until dough forms a ball.

Knead on floured counter.  Place in greased bowl and cover.  Let rise until it has doubled in size.

Glass lids make not
peeking easy.

Punch down the dough.  Make into balls (about the size of cookie dough balls before baking) and place on baking sheets.  Cover and let rise again.

Cut up potatoes to cover bottom of pot.  Cover potatoes with water.  With stove on high, bring water to boil.  Add layer of dough balls.  Cover.  DON'T PEEK!  They are done when you just start to smell potatoes burning to the bottom of the pan (anywhere from 15-25 minutes).

Smother in gravy and enjoy!

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you cannot peek.  If you take the lid off, they will fall, and now you just have bread.

I used about 3/4 of the dough for the dumplings and made the rest into cinnamon rolls.