Doughnut

I don’t remember doughnuts ever being a thing in the Bronx in the 60’s-70’s. There must have been some doughnut place. But nothing stands out. Certainly nothing like a bagel, bialy, knishes, or a slice of pizza.

But today was Super Bowl Sunday (let’s not talk about that referee call) and talk about the snacks, instead.

As long as I had this big pot of oil going for the Buffalo Wings, I might as well fry up some doughnuts.

I had never made them before. But it was shocking how easy and delicious they were. I even used a recipe I wrote my self.

Ingredients

This amount of dough, 500 grams or about 1 pound, will make about ten doughnuts.

Ingredient Amount Baker’s % Volume
Water 160 grams 60% 2/3 Cup
Salt 5 grams 2 % 1 tsp
Sugar 40 grams 15 % 1/5 Cup
Flour 265 grams 100 % 2 Cups
Yeast 2.5 grams 1 % 1 tsp
Butter 30 grams 11 % 1 ounce

Steps To Make Dough

Put the water, salt, and sugar in a bowl.

Stir to dissolve.

Add the flour. And let the flour sit in the water for about thirty minutes.

Then add the yeast.

With a fork, mix the flour with the water mixture until it comes together like corn meal. Don’t mix it into a ball.

Then add the butter to the flour/water mixture after the “corn meal stage.”

Knead for a few minutes.

First Rise

Put in oiled bowl that is covered until the dough is risen (I hate that expression “doubled in size”). It’ll take about 1 - 2 hours.

Second Rise

Punch the dough down.

Return to the bowl, cover with plastic, and place in refrigeration for an hour or two.

Shape

Take dough out of refrigerator.

Press the dough into a rectangle about a 1/2 inch thick.

Use the top edge of a cup (about three to four inches wide) and cut out round pieces of dough.

Place the pieces on parchment paper.

Cover with plastic and let rise for about twenty to thirty minutes (they should be puffy).

Fry in oil at about 325F to 350F (165C to 175C).

Flip onto each side until the entire doughnut is golden bread.

Roll in regular sugar.

Enjoy!!!

Thought Process Behind Recipe

I doubt anyone is actually wondering how I came up with this recipe but the thought process might be interesting to someone besides me.

My process to create recipes uses baker’s percentages.

Flour is always at 100% and all ingredients are adjusted as a percentage of the flour.

A good beginning spot for a bread recipe is 60% water and that’s what I used.

Salt is usually 2% in bread.

Since this is a sweet bread, I used a high amount of sugar. 15%.

For fast rising, 1% yeast is standard.

Butter at 10% seemed about right but when I actually cut the butter into the recipe, it was closer to 30 grams and so I adjusted the butter in the recipe to 11%.

There are no eggs in the recipe because one egg weighs about 50 grams. With only 265 grams of flour, it would mean that eggs would be close to 20%. That felt like way too much. If I had included eggs, the water percentage would have to be adjusted downward. Egg is 75% water. All this made it easier to leave eggs out.

The doughnut was still great.

For history of this family, visit Emlekezik.com