How can one dough make pizza, bread and noodles?

Have you ever squished soft play dough between your fingers? Real dough in the kitchen feels a lot like that. Cooks make so many foods we love from dough.

Pizza is flat and crunchy. Bread is tall and fluffy. Noodles are long and slippery. So how can one dough make pizza, bread and noodles?

Pizza, bread and noodles all start the same way, with flour and water. The cook pours water into a bowl of flour and mixes. The water helps the dry flour stick together into one lump.

For bread and pizza, the cook also adds yeast, tiny living specks that fill dough with bubbles. Noodle dough gets no yeast at all. It stays plain flour and water.

Next, the cook kneads the dough. To knead means pushing, folding and pressing it again and again. Kneading makes the dough smooth and stretchy, like a rubber band.

Now the bread and pizza dough rests in a warm spot. The yeast makes tiny bubbles inside it. The stretchy dough holds the bubbles, so it puffs up big and round.

For bread, the cook shapes the puffy dough into a big round loaf and bakes it. The oven's heat cooks the soft dough firm inside, so the loaf keeps its tall, fluffy shape. The outside turns golden.

For pizza, the cook stretches the same dough out flat and thin. The cook bakes it fast in a very hot oven, so it turns crisp. Only the noodle dough is left, so what do you think the cook does with it?

The cook rolls the kneaded noodle dough out very thin, thinner than a leaf. Then the cook cuts it into long, skinny strips. Each strip is one noodle!

Noodles skip the oven. A grown-up cook drops them into a pot of bubbling water. The hot water cooks them until they are soft and slippery.

The cook kneads flour and water into dough, with yeast for bread and pizza. Then the cook shapes and cooks each dough its own way.

On the kitchen table, a golden loaf, a flat pizza and a bowl of long noodles sit side by side. Each one began as soft flour and water dough.