Salt Dough for Crafting

Salt dough is a great crafting medium. It is inexpensive and since the ingredients are things you probably already have in your cupboards, it can quickly be made on a whim whenever the mood takes you. I have concocted a salt dough recipe that it pliable and easy to work with in raw form, but tough and durable when baked.

Salt dough can be used to make some incredible home crafts, and with a bit of care can end up looking like an expensive product despite its humble origins. If you have never used salt dough before, here are some of its qualities;

• Salt dough takes on impressions and indents quite well and as long as it is baked on the lowest heat possible, it will not lose its shape in the oven. Ideally, you want to treat it like a meringue; you are drying it out, not cooking it.

• Salt dough does not colour in the oven the way that cookies would, although the edges can catch if you leave it in too long. The lack of colouring is usually a good thing though, because it acts as a blank canvas for you to add your own artistic touches.

• Salt dough is non-toxic and considered a safe medium to use with children, but under no circumstances should this be consumed. Despite being called 'dough', it is NOT a food product and should be used for crafting purposes only.

• Salt dough should be easily pliable and stick to itself. This means that you can use it to make small models or layer motifs and textures into it.

• Salt dough sets hard like clay when baked. It can be snapped if you put force into it, but the dough should be sturdy enough to withstand general wear, tear, knocks and taps just fine. If you are using it to make decorations that only make an appearance once a year, they will remain in one piece until you need them again as long as you pack them away securely.

I use boiling water straight out of the kettle for this dough for a few reasons:

1. First, it helps the salt crystals to dissolve. Some recipes that I have tried with cold water tend to leave the dough feeling like sandpaper, and after a session of rolling, cutting and modelling I felt like my hands were slowly being shredded. The only cold water recipe which did not have this problem needed a larger quantity of water to incorporate the salt properly, and I found this quite gluey to work with.

2. It cooks out the flour which gives the dough more stretch. This means it is less crumbly and can be moved fairly easily without bits dropping off or the shape distorting. I found this particularly useful when rolling out the dough. I could get lovely smooth sheets of dough that can be rolled a bit thinner than some of the cold water recipes I tried.

3. It seems to stabilise the dough. By cooking the flour, you can leave the remaining dough in a bag and come back to it later to find very little change in texture. The cold water recipes I tried all seemed to tighten up considerably after an hour or so. With this hot water recipe, you can take coffee breaks in between rolling batches and as long as you keep it in a bag to stop it drying out, you do not have to worry about it going tough and leathery.

*A word of warning - If you cook this salt dough in anything but the absolute lowest temperature possible, the dough may form air pockets and rise upwards slightly. The edge shape will remain the same, but it may give a blistered appearance to your creation. If you are concerned that your oven temperature is getting too high, turn your oven off and leave the salt dough in there to cool with it.*

This recipe makes a hefty batch of salt dough so it should keep you busy for hours. Try to use only handfuls of the dough at a time and leave the rest in a plastic bag to the side until you need more. You really don't want your dough to start drying out. This salt dough will last for about 3 days in the fridge in an airtight bag before it starts getting unpleasantly sticky and tricky to work with, but ideally use it within 24 hours of making it.

Salt Dough Recipe

INGREDIENTS

250g Freshly Boiled Water

350g Bread Flour

100g Salt

10g Oil

50g Cornflour

1) Put the kettle on and weigh out the flour, salt and cornflour into a mixing bowl. Combine these ingredients with a whisk and make sure there are no lumps of cornflour. Make a well in the centre.

2) Place a heat-proof pouring jug on your measuring scales and carefully pour 250g of the freshly boiled water from the kettle into the jug.

3) Please do not burn yourself as you pour the hot water into the well of dry ingredients, and quickly use a wooden spoon to fold all of the ingredients together. When loosely combined, add the olive oil and carry on. The dough will be too hot to handle at this point, so keep mixing the dough as well as you can with the wooden spoon until the mixture comes together into a rough ball and cools slightly.

4) When the dough is cool enough to handle, tip the dough out onto a kitchen surface and start kneading. It should not need additional oil or flour so be patient. Keep kneading the dough until you end up with a warm, soft, smooth ball of slightly elastic dough that comes away cleanly from the counter surface. Place the dough in a plastic bag and leave it to cool to room temperature before crafting with it.

5) Now you can roll out, cut, shape, model and play with your salt dough.

6) To bake, preheat your oven to the lowest possible heat setting. Use a very flat baking tray with low sides and line it with baking paper. Arrange your salt dough creations on the tray so that they do not touch. They will not expand in the oven, but they will fuse together if they come into contact.

The baking time will vary depending on the size and thickness of your salt dough; small, thin things may only take 20 minutes, whereas larger items can take several hours. Remember that you are trying to dehydrate the dough, and it is vital that a constant low temperature is maintained. For longer bakes, you may need to occasionally turn off the oven and leave the salt dough in there to cool slightly before turning the oven on again and resuming the bake.

The dough is finished when it is completely dry and crisp. The dough will become a bit rubbery before it reaches this stage, so leave the dough in the oven for longer if there is any bending or softness.