Dough Comes Out Thin With Thorpe Rolling Pin
June 04, 1987 By Jolene Worthington.
There are a few kitchen tools that, with care, will last a lifetime. A well-seasoned cast iron fryer and a nonporous mortar and pestle are two examples. A third is the indestructible Thorpe rolling pin.
The shame of all this is that our mothers and grandmothers did not use the Thorpe, popular with professional bakers since the `30s. Instead, as antique stores and junk shops will testify, they used toy-like relics of rolling pins with squeaky red handles and warped and wobbly wood-on-wood actions. Thorpes do not have quaint, old-fashioned charm, but they are made of hard rock maple and come from a tradition of Yankee ingenuity and craftsmanship. It is a name you can trust.
The secret of the Thorpe lies in its weight (more than 3 1/2 pounds), its ball-bearing precision and steel rod core and its sealed wood rolling surface, which facilitates easy release from dough.
Why people persist in buying flimsy lightweight rolling pins to roll puff pastry, cookie, pie and bread dough, I’ll never know. Sure, you can roll pastry and bread dough with thin pins and fancy French rolling pins, marble rolling pins and even a wine bottle in a pinch.
However, for rolling out pastry dough, puff pastry and bread (yeast)
dough--and marzipan and gum paste, if you’re a cake decorator--there is nothing like a heavy, fluid-moving rolling pin. Gliding over dough with a Thorpe is like riding in a luxury automobile. The weight and smoothness of the mechanism seem to do all the work for you.
The Thorpe, with its even, heavy pressure, quickly reduces the thickness of the dough. Lighter rolling pins are dependent upon the pressure you exert, and will often stretch and tear the dough because it is nearly impossible to sustain the same pressure throughout a roll.
When rolling pie dough with a Thorpe, or its equivalent, the secret is to roll as quickly as possible, using short, quick, even strokes. Begin in the center of the dough, never go over the edge, and move the dough a quarter turn on the pastry board to keep it from sticking. The weight of a heavy pin allows you to do this quickly without tearing and stretching the dough, which can prematurely activate the gluten and cause the dough to shrink.
Thorpe rolling pins come in various sizes. For the home, there are 12 and 15-inch sizes. For the professional baker, there is an 18-inch model. One of the easier sizes to use is the 15-inch model with a 3- to 3 1/2-inch diameter roller, weighing 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 pounds respectively.
Never immerse a Thorpe in water. Wipe it off with a damp cloth and occasionally rub it down with mineral oil.
The Thorpe is available in 12-inch size for $17 at Crate & Barrel stores, 101 N. Wabash Ave. and 850 N. Michigan Ave.
Williams-Sonoma, 17 E. Chestnut St., has three sizes, 12-inch ($18), 15-inch ($23) and 18-inch ($25).
The 15- and 18-inch models are available for $20 and $26 respectively at Cook’s World, 999 Elmhurst Rd., in the Randhurst Shopping Center in Mt. Prospect.
Julia Child said to throw away little rolling pins, and go for a big pin. Sometimes she preferred French pins, and other times a big Heavy Pin like I just got. Why did I wait so long with a tiny grocery store pin?
