Dough is a malleable, sometimes elastic paste made from flour (which itself is made from grains or from leguminous or chestnut crops). Dough is typically made by mixing flour with a small amount of water or other liquid and sometimes includes yeast or other leavening agents, as well as ingredients such as fats or flavourings.

Making and shaping dough begins the preparation of a wide variety of foodstuffs, particularly breads and bread-based items, but also including biscuits, cakes, cookies, dumplings, flatbreads, noodles, pasta, pastry, pizza, piecrusts, scones and similar items. Dough can be made from a wide variety of flour, commonly wheat and rye but also maize, rice, legumes, almonds, and other cereals or crops.

There is no formal definition of what makes dough, though most doughs have viscoelastic properties.

Yeast-leavened doughs are used to make various types of bread, including bread rolls, loaves and some types of flatbread. Not all yeast doughs require kneading. High-hydration doughs like ciabatta and focaccia may be folded to develop gluten or not kneaded at all. Commercial bread dough may also include dough conditioners, which help make the dough and the final product more consistent.

The addition of milk, salt, fats, eggs, sugar or other ingredients will produce bread products of varying texture. Enriched doughs include Viennoiserie, and some old-fashioned holiday breads made with brioche doughs like babka, panettone and king cake. Quick breads use leavening agents other than yeast (such as baking powder or baking soda), and include soda bread, scones and biscuits.

Unleavened bread is made not only from wheat but in many cultures has been made from locally available starchy ingredients like corn, oats and cassava since the earliest times.

Laminated dough such as mille-feuille and puff pastry are flour-based doughs folded over fat to create layers and rolled out. The folding and rolling process can be repeated to create very thin layers of dough and butter to create the puff pastry. There are many different techniques to create laminated doughs and some like paratha are relatively simple while others like mille-feuille are more laborious. Most laminated doughs are leavened only by the steam created by the folding process. Croissants, however, are made with yeast.

Choux pastry is a steam-leavened dough used for some types of sweet pastries, notably cream puffs, eclairs, some homemade funnel cakes, tulumba and churros. Unlike most other pastry doughs, the ingredients for the dough are cooked on the stove top before the dough is baked until achieving the consistency of a thick paste. Choux means cabbage in French. It is thought that the name comes from the shape of the cream puffs made with choux paste.