I have actually never made homemade doughnuts by myself, however when I was 5 I did help my mom with this task as well as many others in the kitchen. It was a great time, it did make me late for work the Sunday, oops. I took them to work with me as a bribe it worked. I only made a half batch of doughnuts because I may have eaten the whole batch. Is there anything better than a fresh glazed doughnut hole?
The original recipe did call for all purpose flour, but I substituted whole wheat pastry flour instead. They turned out light and fluffy even with that replacement.
- 1.5 cups milk
- 1/3 cups vegetable shortening
- 4.5 tsp yeast
- 1/3 cup warm water
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 cups sugar
- 1 vanilla bean
- 1.5 tsp salt
- 4 2/3 cups flour
- Mix milk and shortening in a suace pan over low heat unitl shortening is melted
- Place yeast and warm water in a bowl for 5 minutes until yeast blooms
- Place yeast mixture and shortening mixture in the bottom of a stand mixer
- Add in eggs, sugar, salt and half of the flour, mix until combined
- Add the other half of flour
- Beat with dough hook for 3-5 minutes, until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl
- Transfer to a lightly greased bowl
- Let raise until doubled in size
- Roll out onto a flour surface
- Cut appropriate size and shape of doughnuts or doughnut holes
- Let raise for 30 minutes
- Fry in 365 degree oil until golden brown
This is the dough after beating for 5 minutes. It is very elastic and ready to go into a lightly oiled bowl to raise.
This is a snaphot of the dough after it doubled in size, waiting to be poured out and rolled out.
This shows how light the dough was after it had a chance to raise.
Doughnut holes in the forground and doughnuts in the background after they have raised.
