Your Best Defense for Cleaning Up Sticky Dough — Holiday Cleanup

I'm not a huge baker (Christmas cookies are my one exception), so my mother and I have gone back and forth on the virtues of making your own pie crust versus buying the ready-made kind. In case there's any confusion: She likes to make it, and I tend to buy it.

Even though the recipe for making pie crusts is fairly simple and definitely more delicious, I find the cleanup to be annoying — all that flour everywhere, not to mention the sticky dough that gets on your mixing bowl, cooking utensils, and countertops. It just seems to cling, and tackling it with my usual sponge and hot, soapy water only seems to spread it (and gum up the sponge, too).

Well, turns out I've been doing it wrong. The best defense for cleaning up sticky dough is actually the opposite of my instinct: cold water, not hot.

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