Making Dumpling Wrappers From Scratch

For someone who loves dumpling so much, I have always avoided making my own wrappers for so long because I never really had that much free time to make anything from scratch. And when the quarantine happened, I had so much time in my hands that I decided... it's time to get my hands (and laptop) dirty.

I've always been wary whenever I've worked with flour. In baking class in high school, we were taught that everything had to have the right amount for something to be perfect. So since then, I haven't really done much baking or working with flour. I had to research the ways to make the perfect dough for dumpling wrappers, but I still had a hard time imagining it. That's when I told myself to screw it and just pour the flour in.

I poured about half a kilo of flour into a bowl and added salt and pepper in. Then, I put in warm water and started mixing. My ancestors must've been sleeping when I was making the dough because it was too watery. I had to add more and more flour until I got the texture to at least pull the dough out of the bowl in one piece.

After using about one more cup of flour, I was finally able to take the dough out as a very sticky ball. In the absence of a kneading pad (or whatever you call it), I used my chopping board instead. I dusted the wooden board and started kneading. The recipe I was following told me that it could take about 15 minutes for the dough to properly form. But I guess that estimation was only for a cup of dough.

Another half-hour passed and finally, I have a ball of dough that wasn't sticking to my palms or the chopping board. I happily placed it back in its bowl and let it sit for another half hour (yes, I set the timer on my phone). After 30 minutes, I was ready to start making my own wrappers.

Because the decision to make the wrappers was impulsive, I don't really have the right tools to roll out and cut the dough. I had to, yet again, improvise and took for things I can use to roll out and cut. I ended up using a small tumbler that's round enough to flatten the dough and my coffee mug which I used to cut circular wrappers on the dough.

Boy, if making the dough was exhausting, it was nothing compared to rolling it out and cutting them. Because I ended up almost using the whole kilogram of flour. I had a huge ball of dough to roll out and cut. Rolling it out like a doughnut was the easiest step, to be honest. What came before or after it was some really tedious work.

Here is the final look of the dumpling wrappers I have made for the first time!

I think my biceps and triceps fats have shrunk a little from all the rolling I did but thankfully, after an hour or two, I was finally done. Now on to the stuffing!