Homemade Doughnuts
Jam doughnuts... we all know that these beauties are not good for us but my goodness don’t they taste delightful. Who can resist light and fluffy doughnuts?
The recipe below is for yeasted doughnuts, and I use my bread machine to make the dough for me, it’s much much easier, if you don’t have a bread machine, no need to panic you can make the dough with a dough hook on a stand mixer or even by hand.​
Yeasted Doughnuts
Ingredients
100ml water
150ml buttermilk
1 egg
55g butter
450g bread flour
60g sugar
1 tsp salt
10g fresh yeast
Vegetable oil for frying
Caster sugar for coating the doughnuts
Jam for filling (I prefer homemade)
Method
1. When using a bread machine: Place all the wet ingredients for the dough into the bread machine, then sprinkle in all the dry ingredients apart from the yeast. Make an indentation in the top of the ingredients and add the yeast, make sure that the yeast and salt don’t touch. Turn onto the dough function and leave until it beeps at you!
2. If you’re using a stand mixer: Place all of the dry ingredients into the mixing bowl, make a well, and add the yeast. Combine all of the wet ingredients for the dough and pour into the well, mix with a dough hook until a dough is formed, then continue for another 5-6 mins. Remove from the bowl and hand knead for approximately 3 mins, then cover and leave until doubled in size.
3. By Hand: Place all of the dry ingredients in a bow, make a well in the centre of the ingredients and add the yeast. Mix together the wet ingredients and pour into the well, form into a dough, then knead for 10-20 mins, until you have a silky soft dough, set to one side, cover and leave to double in size.
4. All methods: once the dough has doubled, place on a floured surface. I divided the mix in half, keep the other half covered. Roll out the dough to about 1/2 an inch thick, then cut with a round cutter, about 3 inches in diameter, then cut out the holes with a smaller cutter about 1 inch. (you could purchase a doughnut cutter, but I don’t mind mine being a little bit off centre!) Save the holes.
5. Place each doughnut and hole onto its own square of parchment paper and then onto a tray or similar, cover and leave to rise until doubled in size.
6. Divide the remaining dough into quarters and then in half again to make 8 pieces of dough, (you can weigh them but I don’t bother). Roll each piece of dough into a ball, place on an individual sheet of parchment, then cover and leave to rise until doubled in size.
7. Heat the deep fat fryer to 180 C (if you don’t have a deep fat fryer you can use a pan of oil, but you will need a thermometer to check the temperature of the oil.)
8. Drop the doughnuts into the oil, 2 large ones at a time, otherwise, the oil gets too cool. Turn them once they are golden brown, once coloured on both sides, remove them and place them on a plate lined with kitchen roll, then transfer to a cooling rack.
9. Sprinkle caster sugar on a plate. Once the doughnuts are cool enough to handle, roll them in the sugar and return back to the cooling rack.
10. To fill your doughnuts, use a long nozzle and pipe in the jam, if you’re feeling adventurous you could pipe in lots of other fillings, Nutella, apple sauce or custard. These doughnut are also good for glazing, or splitting open and filling with fresh cream and jam, much like those sold in Greggs!
Yeast
When baking I only use fresh yeast, but if you can’t get your hand on fresh yeast just divide the weight of the yeast by 3. A good tip for getting fresh yeast is to ask at the bakery in your local Tesco, they always give you quite a big bag and what’s even better it’s FREE!!