Entry #5 — DOIN’ DONUTS!
HI!
& I’m back. Like Jordan coming back to the Bulls.
My birthday was a few months ago & I took a trip to Chicago! Before this year, I had never traveled somewhere by myself, only to and from my hometown where my family lives and where I live now :) This was something super special for me and I plan on going somewhere every year on my birthday now!
I got to ride a train! I know that’s not exciting lol, but it was like a subway and it goes through the city like a highway! I get excited by these simple things haha, I was so happy to get to go to a new airport too :) Anyways, on the first day, I was dragging my carry-on around the city like Miley in the Hannah Montana movie, really just due to my mid planning, but I feel it added to the experience.
Favorite place there really wasn’t even something I paid to go do. Where I live now, there isn’t any large body of water, at least not for like half a day to a day’s drive, so the first thing I did when I got off was walk to the water. Something about it really made me feel lighter. Like there’s just boats at the harbor and they belong to someone and they just go sail when they want to. So cool fr. There was people just running, like in the city. & they get to see these things everyday, like this is just where they live! What I’m getting at is that where I live, it isn’t very walkable at all, so all of these little things Chicago life has seemed very wow wow wow to me.
I went to a restaurant downtown where all they sell are chicken sandwiches and donuts! Well, I ordered a chicken sandwich and a plain glazed lol :) Best chicken sandwich ever & possibly the fattest donut I’ve ever had!!!! This is the only picture I have of my donut, but look!!
& that brings us to this weekend’s recipe!!! Oh I recommend buying a donut cutter at a restaurant supply store like me, so you can cut the donuts super ez-peasy :)
Glazed Donut Dough:
240ml warm whole milk — 2 & 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast — 54g granulated sugar — 1 teaspoon granulated sugar (separate)— 540g all-purpose flour — 1/2 teaspoon salt — 85g unsalted butter (melted)— 2 large eggs (room temperature) — vegetable oil (for frying)
Glazed Donut Glaze:
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360g powdered sugar — 90ml whole milk — 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Let’s get into making the dough. First, in a smaller bowl that you can whisk in without spilling, mix the teaspoon of sugar, warm milk, and yeast. Mix till it is all incorporated, then put it aside. You’re gonna wanna be watching it every few minutes to make sure it begins lightly bubbling, that’s how we know the yeast is working and that the dough will expand when we need it to.
While, you’re waiting for your yeast mixture to begin bubbling, we can make the other mixture! Take a very large bowl and mix the flour and salt first. Just give it a few swirls with your whisk :) Now, what I did was wrong, but it worked either way. What you SHOULD do is whisk together the melted butter, eggs, and sugar until it’s smooth, then mix that into the flour/salt mixture. What I did was throw those straight into the flour/salt mixture and started incorporating it. I recommend doing the first thing lol.
It looks a little grainy here, but I worked it a bit more and then it became smoother :) Now, we’ll combine both mixtures (yeast & flour) and begin kneading and working the dough!!! You’ll wanna keep smushing, pulling, folding, and stretching the dough until it looks like this:
Once it looks like that, it’s ready and you’re done working it! Now, take another large bowl, lightly oil the inside, and throw your dough in there. We have to wait an hour-ish to give the dough time to rise, it should expand to double-ish the it’s original size.
See! It got all fat lol. During the hour you need to wait for the dough to expand, you can clean up and make the glaze! Take another large bowl and throw in the powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla extract. Now, just mix it until it all incorporates. It will look like this when it’s ready! Cover it and throw it into the fridge.
Back to the present lol. Your dough has risen and it’s ready to cut donuts into. Take a large pan or something flat and throw a little flour on it, just so it becomes smooth, then take your dough and start pressing and expanding it like a tortilla. Take your donut cutter and start pressing and spinning it to cut the donuts from the dough. Normally, you’d keep the middle part and make donut holes, but I threw that dough back in to maximize how many donuts I could make.
Put the donuts you cut onto a piece of parchment paper, so they’re easy to peel off when you start frying. You’re gonna wanna be able to grab them quick.
Now, you have time for another cleanup break. We need to wait another 45 minutes for them to expand again and get even fatter. Mine looked like this after the 45.
Now, they’re ready for frying!!!! I’m a little scared of working with oil, so I didn’t preheat it until I really needed to when I had everything ready to throw in. What you wanna do is take a deep pot, like a dutch oven, and pour about 2–3 inches of oil in. Normally, you’d take a deep frying thermometer and wait until it reads 350°F. Yeah, I don’t have one, so I did it old school. I turned the stove all the way up and threw small pieces of dough into the oil until they sunk for a few seconds then floated to the surface. That’s about how I knew the oil was more-or-less ready :)
I didn’t work much with timing on these also, just gauging off the color of the donut and holes. You also don’t want the dough to brown super quick in a few seconds, otherwise the outside will burn while the inside will stay raw. Mine took about 30 seconds or so on each side to brown how we want them. You’ll really just wanna gauge the color and speed at which they’re browning. Not sure if that makes sense?
Anyways, you can start throwing your actual dough in. I began with the holes :) These shouldn’t take super long to fry. You also wanna be spinning it with a spoon in the oil, so they fry evenly.
I only had 4 holes, so I moved onto the donuts pretty quickly. Same steps on the donuts. Gauge the color and speed that they turn into a golden brown. Flip on each side until they are both a golden brown. Ideally, if I had the thermometer, it’d take about a minute on each side. You’ll go through these pretty quickly. I was flipping alot to make sure they cooked evenly, but also because I couldn’t rely on time to tell me.
This is how mine looked all fried up!
Kinda sorta totally amazing imo :)
Remember that glaze you made and threw in the fridge? Go and grab it and give it a stir. It might have set a little bit while in the fridge. Give it a stir, so you can start dipping holes and donuts. Since you’ll go through the frying pretty quickly, everything will still be warm, which is cool. Start throwing your holes and donuts into the glaze. You wanna make sure the glaze gets EVERYWHERE. After that, you’re done & another recipe is under your belt.
They’ll look like there isn’t much glaze on them at this point, but when they cool, they’ll turn white and be so much more delicious. Also, you can flip the donuts if you feel the glaze is falling off too much.
This was a much easier recipe to execute than the conchas from last time :) & I had time to cleanup during, so when I finished I could lie down and call it a good baking day.
Baking has been so exciting and fulfilling, it really does make me smile during. The most important ingredient I think is that it makes me happy to giveaway what I make. There’s nothing like making someone smile. It really was a good baking day fr, I hope you try the recipe and make others around you happy with you make :) :) :)
-Baker Juan Ruiz
