What am I doing wrong. I have tried to make Czech dumplings a few times now and once again they just don’t seem right.

They are dense and not fluffy. The edges are also slightly mushy still.

Any ideas? I thought I hadn’t cooked them long enough but I’ve added longer on the cooking times to help which didn’t work.

by Ok_Platypus4879

14 comments

  3. Steam them instead of boiling. That’s the whole trick. This looks exactly like my mum’s dense, slimy dumplings that I hated my whole childhood. Once I realised you could steam them to get fluffy, airy inside and perfect outside, I love dumplings.

    Also, could be recipe. I always add tiny bit of sugar to my yeast, makes it rise better. Salt comes in only with the last of the flour.

  4. Could be wrong flour or yeast. Also seems like its not proofed enough, or possibly too much salt.
    Its not boiling/steaming issue, its the dough.

  6. What kind of flour do you use?

    You need coarse flour not plain one.

  7. Dont lisent to these mofos, use baking powder(prdopeč). Dumpling using yeast is next level.

  8. My grandma makes the absolute best kynutý knedlík I know, and she always steams it with this setup: a large pot with water, a piece of canvas (plain cotton kitchen towel also works) placed over the pot and tied around its rim with a lace, (so that the canvas can sag a bit, but not deep enough to touch the water in the pot), the raw dumpling(s) are then set on the canvas, and then instead of a lid, it’s covered with a [Remoska ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remoska)pot turned upside down (more headroom for the dumplings).

  9. This so funny. Bread was supposed to go into the oven but it fell in the water. 💦 💦💦

  10. The edges will be always mushy when you boil them and not steam them, does not really matter that much. This looks like under-proof dough. Use more yeast/starter than the recipe says, even like 1/3 more. Better to use fresh yeast. Always start the yeast in different container with warm (35 degree celcius max) milk/water (Depends if you wanna eat is fresh or store it for more days) + sugar and little bit of flour. If it blooms, it is alive and you can make the dough. Mix the salt in the flour before you add anything else or it could kill the yeast (in practical sense, if the yeast already bloom, it does not matter that much, never happened to me). Let it in warm place till it doubles (1-2h mostly), kneed it into balls, rolls shape it any way you want to, let it raise again (1-2h) and then boil/steam them.

  12. I do karlovarský dumpling instead of houskový, no yeast needed, I put it into the kitchen foil and cook it in steam on that metallic tool that someone posted in comments and it always looks and tastes good, here in the description of the video there’s a recipe which you can have translated, i don’t use that aluminium foil which the chef used, no need for it, https://youtu.be/SIee8PWWSbI?si=xV2Ot96z0mGjY2HB or here you can better see how it’s done https://youtu.be/ERCq6A8s8dQ?si=ZiX5wGNlxlzoOmdb

  13. This is typical when using fine flour. You need to use coarse flour

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