DOUGHNUT BASICS
Before you get started with your first batch of dough, I encourage you to read through this section for an overview of doughnut making and general tips and tricks on ingredients and tools.
HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED
The first section of recipes is all about the basics of doughnut making. In it, you’ll find recipes for raised and cake doughs, including chocolate doughs, doughs that can be baked instead of fried, and doughs for vegan and gluten-free diets. You’ll find many well-known specialty doughs—like old-fashioned sour cream, ricotta, apple cider, and French cruller—as well as some that are less familiar, like picarones from Peru and malasadas from Portugal. You’ll also find recipes for basic glazes that work with these doughs—mix and match to your heart’s content.
For something a little more special, turn to the Flavors chapter, where you’ll find even more interesting combinations, from Apple Pie to Crème Brûlée. Each of these recipes refers back to a dough recipe type. Pick the dough that works best for you (traditional, baked, vegan, or gluten-free), then follow the recipe as directed.
If you’re planning ahead, it is worth noting that unfilled, unglazed doughnuts can be frozen once they are cooled. To reheat, microwave for eight to ten seconds.
A note for those cooking vegan and gluten-free doughnuts: Not all of the variations on the basic recipes include vegan or gluten-free instructions, but most should be easily convertible by using readily available substitutions. Gluten-free doughnuts can be a bit harder to fill than their wheat-based counterparts because by their very nature they are denser. To make things a bit easier, use a chopstick to hollow out the middle of the doughnut before using the piping tip.
INGREDIENTS
For best results, all your ingredients (including milk, eggs, yogurt, sour cream, and butter) should be at room temperature when they are used.
Flour
Choose your flour based on which type of doughnut you are making. Hard, high-protein flours, such as bread flour, work best for yeast-raised doughnuts. However, if your doughnuts are a bit too tough or heavy, try a blend of bread and unbleached all-purpose flours. Unbleached all-purpose flour is best for cake doughnuts, but if your doughnuts fall flat when removed from the fryer, next time mix in a little bread flour.
Different flour brands have different protein contents and densities, both of which can dramatically affect the consistency of the dough. Even the humidity of the day can change how much flour fills up a measuring cup. It is best to use weight measurements if you can, but if you need to use cup measurements, use the spoon-and-swipe method on freshly sifted flour. You may still need to adjust the amount of flour in the recipe to achieve the perfect consistency based on your flour brand. I typically use either King Arthur flours or a locally grown and milled flour that measures between 120 and 140 grams per cup.
If you can’t eat wheat, I think you’ll be quite pleased with the gluten-free raised and cake doughnuts in this book. Doughnuts require a very lightweight gluten-free baking mix that doesn’t have a strong flavor. My friend and author Shauna James Ahern helped me develop a terrific gluten-free flour mix for doughnuts for the first edition of this book.
Since that time, many gluten-free flour blends have come on the market, and I’ve learned even more about gluten-free baking. While I still recommend the original blend for the cake doughnuts, I prefer a blend based on Gluten Free on a Shoestring’s Better Than Cup4Cup blend for yeast doughnuts, which are fairly finicky when it comes to the ratio of protein to starch needed to give a fluffy dough. Without the gluten (or without using things with “modified” in their name), you’ll never quite get the same airiness as a wheat-based doughnut, but these doughnuts have a gorgeous, almost creamy crumb I think you’ll love.
Gluten-Free Baking Mix for Cake Doughnuts
MAKES ENOUGH FOR A STANDARD CAKE DOUGHNUT RECIPE
1 cup (175 grams) potato starch
½ cup (60 grams) tapioca starch
½ cup (60 grams) sweet rice flour
¼ cup (100 grams) potato or sweet sorghum flour
• In a small bowl, combine all the ingredients. Store in an airtight container until ready to use.
Gluten-Free Baking Mix for Yeast Doughnuts
MAKES ENOUGH FOR A STANDARD YEAST DOUGHNUT RECIPE
⅓ cup (54 grams) tapioca starch
⅓ cup (54 grams) nonfat dry milk
¼ cup (108 grams) white rice flour
3 tablespoons (66 grams) brown rice flour
3 tablespoons (66 grams) cornstarch
2 tablespoons (12 grams) potato starch
1 teaspoon (5 grams) xanthan gum
• In a small bowl, combine all the ingredients. Store in an airtight container until ready to use.
Leavening
Raised doughnuts use yeast as their primary leavening agent. All the yeast-raised doughnut recipes in this book call for active dry yeast; if you are using fresh cake yeast, you’ll need to double the quantity listed in each recipe. If you think you’ll be making yeast-raised doughnuts fairly regularly, it’s far more cost effective to buy active dry yeast in bulk rather than in individual packages; store this quantity of yeast in the refrigerator.
Baking powder and, for some recipes, baking soda provide leavening for cake doughnuts. Whenever baking powder is called for in a recipe, it’s best to use an aluminum-free double-acting baking powder.
A NOTE ON PROOFING: Yeast doughs have to rest for a while to let the yeast do its business and aerate the dough; this makes the doughnuts soft and light and develops the flavor. The basic yeast (raised) dough recipe has three separate proofing stages. The first is creating a soft “sponge,” which jump-starts the yeast into action. The second is a longer rise, done either in a warm environment (70 to 80 degrees F) or in the refrigerator, depending on the recipe. The third and final stage occurs after the dough has been rolled and cut. In this stage, the temperature of the dough and the room can have a big impact on how long it takes to achieve the right amount of rise, so the time needed can vary considerably; keep a close eye on the dough, checking at five-minute intervals. When properly proofed, the doughnut rings will be quite puffy and rounded, but still springy.
Cake doughnuts don’t need to proof, but they do need a resting period to give the flour a chance to absorb the liquid. Without this rest, cake doughnuts can take up too much oil from the fryer and become heavy and greasy.
Sugar
These recipes are best made using superfine sugar, which melts into the dough smoothly and works beautifully to coat the doughnuts, after frying, with a quick shake in a bag. If you are using regular granulated sugar, which is less dense than superfine, follow the weight measurements or heap your volume measurements.
Fats and oils
Fat incorporated into the dough helps prevent the dough from absorbing too much oil while frying, so don’t be tempted to skimp. Solid fats like coconut oil, vegetable shortening, lard, or unsalted butter work best. Liquid fats tend to run out of the doughnut, leaving a greasy mess once the doughnut has cooled.
For deep-frying, I recommend safflower oil, which is inexpensive and very heat tolerant. Peanut oil is another great choice if you are cooking for those without nut allergies. Canola oil and sunflower oil are also good choices.
How much oil you need will depend on the size of your pot. You should fill the pot with a depth of at least two inches of oil and leave at least two inches from the top of the oil to the top of the pot.
You can use the same frying oil several times, but it is important to strain out any particles between uses and to change the oil completely if it starts to get dark or if your doughnuts are starting to feel too greasy on the surface even when cooked at the right temperature. Old oil leads to greasy, off-tasting doughnuts.
When you are done with the oil, make sure you dispose of it properly according to your city’s regulations. Do not pour it down the drain, or you may find yourself quickly racking up plumbing expenses! If you compost, you can stir small amounts of oil in with other organic material. Most cities have residential cooking oil drop-off locations, where the used oil is recycled into biodiesel. You might also check with local restaurants to see whether you can add your used oil to their grease bins.
And of course, deep-frying should always be done with caution. Never leave a pot of oil heating on the stove unattended!
TOOLS
Here are a few tools that will make your doughnut making easier.
Doughnut cutters
All you really need is a biscuit cutter (or even an upside-down glass) to make doughnuts, but a doughnut cutter that cuts the holes out at the same time is a nice little gadget to have and should run you only about six dollars. Make sure you get one that is made from very firm metal and doesn’t bend easily as some cookie cutters do.
A large, heavy-bottomed pot
Even though I own a deep fryer, I prefer to use a small three-quart Dutch oven to fry doughnuts. It uses less oil, and cleanup is a bit easier. Just make sure your pot is deep enough to hold at least two inches of oil with at least two inches of clearance to the top of the pot.
A fast, accurate thermometer
If you are frying on the stove top, a fast, accurate thermometer that can measure up to 400 degrees F is a must-have. Look for one that is labeled a deep-fat or candy thermometer. You can also use laser thermometers, and follow the manufacturer’s instructions. Make sure yours is working properly with this simple test: Bring a pot of water to a boil on the stove. Meanwhile, fill a glass with ice water. Now stick the thermometer in the ice water (you may not be able to get a reading if your thermometer doesn’t go that low; that’s OK). When the water comes to a boil, move the thermometer to the boiling water, being careful not to touch the tip to the bottom of the pan. Pay attention to how long it takes to come up to 212 degrees F. If it takes more than thirty seconds, consider getting a faster thermometer.
A stand mixer with a dough hook attachment
It’s certainly possible to make any dough in this book without a stand mixer and a dough hook, but if you have one, you should use it. You can make the doughs by hand—and skip your upper-arm workout at the gym. Using a hand mixer or even mixing with a wooden spoon is fine for any of the cake doughs but not recommended where a dough hook is specifically called for.
A dough bucket
If you are making raised dough, a plastic dough bucket with volume markings on the side will help you know more easily when your dough has doubled in size.
A pastry cloth
I’ve found that the best material on which to place rising yeast doughnuts—without getting the dough stuck to it—is either linen or a tight-weave, non–terry cloth towel, well dusted with flour. You can also use parchment paper during the proofing stage, but the dough may stick a bit. If it does, try greasing the paper with some cooking spray before placing the doughnuts on it.
A pastry bag and parchment paper
Some doughnuts are lighter and fluffier when made from a batter instead of a shapeable dough. Professional doughnut shops use a special doughnut dropper to make perfect rings that drop directly into the hot oil. Inexpensive versions are also available online, but they don’t work as well with this book’s cake recipes as simply using a pastry bag to pipe the batter onto little squares of greased parchment, and then dropping the doughnut, parchment and all, into the oil. The parchment will slide off easily once the doughnut has started to brown. (For full details on this technique, see Basic Cake).
For filled doughnuts, a needlelike Bismarck (#230) tip works best to inject the filling without creating too much of a hole. A star tip will work in a pinch.
A nut milk bag
If you are making your own almond milk or coconut milk for glazes, a nut milk bag is the best way to filter out the creamy liquid from the gritty meat. If you don’t have one, you can use a double layer of cheesecloth.
Doughnut pans
If you are baking cake doughnuts, you’ll need to buy a special doughnut pan with a rounded cup and post in the middle for each doughnut. Without one, your cake doughnuts will spread and have very flat, hard bottoms. You don’t need a special pan for baking raised doughnuts, though. Although the bottoms will be slightly flatter than that of their fried counterparts, it’s barely noticeable.
Doughnut machines
There are all sorts of electric gadgets for making mini doughnuts. You don’t need any of them to make doughnuts at home, but they certainly make for some fun party entertainment.
For even more on doughnuts, visit my blog at DoughnutCookbook.com.
