Recent comments on my last (admittedly flunked) idea brought me to prove to certain others that the mastery of 'dough and heat technology' is neither especially difficult nor impossible without some extremely minor stores of innovation. Heck, I think I can even do it without involving any magic.
Imagine a metal sheet. Got it? Okay, just making sure we're on the same page here. A metal sheet, square with a one foot side length. Thin but not to the point of being bendable. Made, perhaps, of aluminum or lightweight steel. The surface of this steel sheet is 'bubbled'. It has inch-high domes the whole way across its surface.
You stick the dough onto the bubbling sheet and press it down. Result: dough with roughly 'bubble-like' impressions. Take your 'bubbled' dough, lay it on another piece of dough of equal size, and press the edges together with your fingers. Do not press down the 'bubbles'. Let them be. Result: 'bubbled' dough, but the bubbles are now also enclosed from the bottom. Poke a little hole in each of the 'bubbles' if you want to avoid the chance of them exploding.
Cook. Fill with what you please.-- Pseudonym #3, Jan 19 2005 Snail plate http://www.thegadge...m/781723815101.htmlAn inverted snail plate could serve as a bubbler, in a pinch [robinism, Jan 19 2005] oooh pastry bubble wrap for popping! +1-- po, Jan 19 2005 Hi, po! :) *hugs!*-- Pseudonym #3, Jan 19 2005 Is this pizza dough, pie crust dough, cookie dough, or play dough?-- robinism, Jan 19 2005 Dough is already 'bubbled' in comercial bakeries where cheap supermarket bread is made. This enables them to cut out all the 'proving' and resting normally needed in bread-making and stick the dough straight in the oven. For this kind of bread yeast is added just for flavour.-- hippo, Jan 19 2005 Fill each bubble randomly with jam, chocolate, pesto, caramel, ricotta, pumpkin, stilton, peanut butter etc. for a surprise sandwich.-- wagster, Jan 19 2005 I think it's a good idea, but it's not that hard to do if you just let bread rise for a longish time without rekneading it: the interior bubbles eventually combine into large bubbles. This allows you to make custard filled pastries and other confections.
PS [wagster], maybe you're on to something, though a bite with stilton and ham salad, or peanut butter and jam, or chocolate and caramel *individually* might be better. ;)-- Agamemnon, Apr 05 2006 Raw dough is floppy. How are you going to keep the domes from collapsing? How do you stop the top ones squashing the bottom ones?
If you blind-baked the pastry whilst still on the bubble sheet for a few minutes, took them out, brushed the edges with egg to stick the two halves together, pricked hole in top, filled and then baked until done then it may, possibly, work.-- squeak, Apr 07 2006 If the bottom sheet is 'dished' like a yorkshire pudding tray you could push the dough (or pastry or whatever) into the dishes (maybe with a companion tray that is pressed over the top). You could then cover with a sheet of dough (or pastry or whatever) then bake. You might still need to use a sealant like milk or eggs around the edges of the dishes and poke holes in the top of the sheet. You should then end up with a sheet of small pies.-- st3f, Apr 07 2006 random, halfbakery