What Is a Dough Whisk? All About This Handy Tool That Makes It Easy to Mix Bread Dough and Cake Batter
To the uninitiated, this loopy-looking stick looks like it belongs in some obscure section at the local craft store, but as its name implies, a dough whisk is more like a baker's best friend, neatly and effortlessly blending its way through all kinds of doughs and stiff batters. Known as a brodpisker in its home country of Denmark (which translates to "bread whipper"), these tools consists of three very stiff open coils at varying sizes that thoroughly, yet gently pass through wet and dry ingredients, ultimately blending them into a cohesive dough or batter. Leave it to the Danes to design something beautiful and useful.
Courtesy of King Arthur Baking
Where a traditional balloon-style whisk will excel at tasks like whipping air into cream, it's a poor choice for jobs like feeding a sourdough starter or blending chocolate chips or oats into a cookie dough. The open coils of a dough whisk are purposefully built that way to avoid the clumping that occurs with regular whisks or wooden spoons, making mixing (and clean up) go smoother.
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Lastly, as specialized as its name sounds, a dough whisk is super versatile. Short of making whipped cream or meringue, there isn't a batter or dough that won't benefit from the dough whisk's gentle touch. Use it to fold your dry ingredients into a muffin or pancake batter, as it performs better than a spatula at combining ingredients without overmixing. Outside the baking department, a dough whisk is fantastic for whisking the lumps out of a stovetop recipe like gravy or polenta.
If you are hereby convinced that a dough whisk is the next great thing that you never knew you needed, there are a few factors to consider before putting one in your shopping cart. Quality is something to look out for; the cheapest (read: flimsiest) option won't last you very long, as the coils are prone to separating from the handle. We like the classic wood-handled model from King Arthur Baking ($14.95, kingarthurbaking.com). And while dough whisks by design are very easy to wash by hand, choose one with a stainless steel handle like the Tovolo Dough Whisk ($10, surlatable.com) if you would prefer running it through the dishwasher.
