Dough
Wheat and water, worked by hand into bread and flatbread. Dough is where the Prep Table's Knead comes in.
Making dough
Put three wheat and a water bucket in the crafting grid, in any arrangement, for three dough. The bucket comes back empty. Plain vanilla bread (three wheat in a row) still works as it always did.
Raw dough is barely food. Bake it in a Furnace, Smoker, Skillet or Stockpot, as any food: it cooks through into a Loaf (the same hunger and saturation as vanilla bread), and keep it on and it dries out and then chars like anything else.
Kneading
Put one dough in the work slot of the Prepare tab and press Knead. No knife is needed. You work the dough with your hands:
- Hold the left button to press. Lower on screen is harder. Let go to rest.
- Pressing builds gluten, which is what makes dough smooth and good to eat, but it also tires the dough. Tense dough takes work badly, and only resting lets it relax. So the game is when to push and when to wait.
- You read the dough, not a number. It smooths and turns glossy as the gluten builds, reddens and shakes as it tenses, and cracks when it tears. A dry, unworked dough is flaky with crumbs.
- Press Done when you are satisfied (the time runs out on its own). The dough rests under a cloth while music plays for how it went, then the cloth lifts.
| Result | What it is | Loaf |
|---|---|---|
| Glossy | well worked, then rested | feeds more |
| Good | worked enough | as vanilla bread |
| Crumbly | not worked enough | feeds less |
| Tough | overworked and torn | feeds least |
Dough nobody kneaded bakes into a loaf a little under good (the unskilled floor): a plain batch off a machine is never refused, only worse. A glossy loaf is the best bread there is.
How the material changes the game. The dough itself sets the feel. Water makes it sticky: it lags your hand, oozes back slowly, and gluten builds slowly, while a drier dough follows your hand at once, bounces, and tears at a lower tension. Fibre tenses dough faster and rests it slower, so a fibrous dough wants shorter, lighter pushes. Fat tenderises: gluten builds slower, but the dough tires less. No dough is best everywhere; each is its own rhythm of push and wait.
Flatbread
One dough in the crafting grid makes one Flatbread Dough. Baked like any food it becomes Flatbread, a sheet you can wrap a dish in: it is the container of the Wrap at the Prep Table. An unbaked flatbread dough still goes in as a container, but a raw one feeds almost nothing.