Dough balls while mashing in are such a pain. Mashing in used to be such a drag for this reason; I'd have to pour a bit of grain in, stir, pour a bit more in, stir, and so on. What I do now is have my kettle raised up a bit and put my Igloo cooler mash tun on the ground, so I can gravity drain my strike water into the MT. Both the kettle and the MT have barbed valves near the bottom, so the heated strike water flows out of the kettle and enters the grain bed in the MT from the bottom. No dough balls, I just open the valves and walk away while the strike water mixes with the grains. Honestly, this is one of the best enhancements I've made to my process because I used to find the doughing-in process such a pain in the ass.