How to Make Playdough

You're going to need:

7-8 cups all-purpose or bread flour
3 cups salt
3 tablespoons cream of tartar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
4 cups hot water
food coloring

You can do this by hand in a regular bowl, but using a stand mixer is much easier if you have one with a bread hook. Mix seven cups of flour together with the rest of the dry ingredients. Add the oil and water and knead with a dough hook in your mixer for 5-6 minutes, or by hand for 8-10 minutes. Add more flour if your playdough seems too sticky--I ended up adding the extra cup.

If you just want to make one color, then add food coloring when you add the wet ingredients (this is a big batch, so it's going to take more food coloring than you might think). If you want to make a couple of colors, then split up your playdough and add food coloring to each small batch separately. I tried doing this part in the mixer, but it didn't work very well so the kids and I had to get our hands dirty and knead it in. It helps if you make a little impression in the middle of the dough, add the food coloring in there, and then fold the dough over so you're not putting your hands right on the food coloring.

Like I said, this recipe make A LOT of play dough, so I put our in zip lock bags, parceled out some of each color to the kids, and saved the rest in the fridge for later. This playdough stays soft for a long time--much longer than Play-Doh does. My daughter has even flattened it out into a pancake and left it outside over night, and the next day I squished it back together again and it was as good as new!

Have fun making your play dough!

This activity is brought to you by Just Barely, where we're always smashing all of the colors together and then eating the playdough!