D-oh

Okay, it is just possible I cannot make dough. Pie dough, that is (well bread dough to if it comes to that). I think it is because I have absolutely no understanding of what it is. I understand rice, have all my life. I understand hoppers - those yeasted batter bowl shaped pancakes (for want of a common description) and can turn them out, albeit I have to use a non-stick hopper pan so the sides aren't as frilly as they could be, but I also don't understand tempering of a pan so am unlikely to make great advances in using a trad hopper pan. I understand string hoppers, which are from a kind of dough, a rice flour paste really that has to be just the right consistency not to totally set off my arthritis as I squeeze out the noodles (some describe them as vermicelli) onto the bamboo mats for steaming, and I make them darn well. I understand pittu, that mix of rice flour and grated coconut steamed in a columnar thingy. I can turn out a damn fine coconut roti and have been known to assay a decent godamba roti (a wheat based roti on the Malaysian side of rotis). But Euro dough is another country to me. I shall persist, however, as I am determined to make a curried beef (or for my vegan and vegetarian housemates curried vegetable) pie.