Homemade Donuts

Fresh Yeasted Donuts

So I am finally making donuts. I am making the yeasty bready glazed style of donuts here, and these donuts turned out really awesome, they are honestly super fun to make, and fresh warm donuts are seriously the best.

Detailed Instructions:

Making the Dough

To start with we need to melt some butter in some milk. Specifically, we need to melt 70 grams or 1/3 cup of butter and we are going to heat this up with 150 mL or about ⅔ of a cup of milk, and we are also going to add a dash of nutmeg for fun. Heat this up until the butter is melted. We wanna let this whole thing cool down to 120 F degrees so we don’t kill our yeast. 

Making the dough using a stand mixer really helps.

While this cools down a little, we can measure out the rest of our ingredients. We are going to need 450 grams or 3.5 cups of all-purpose flour, ⅓ cup or 65 grams of granulated sugar, and 6 grams of salt. We are also going to add in a pack of yeast at this point. Stir everything up with a fork and I am going to pour all of this into a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment. Start slow for it all to come together, then begin to incorporate the liquid. We are also going to need to add two eggs. We are just going to let this go, it will be messy at first and start to come together over time. Eventually, when it is smooth and stretchy like this, we are done with the mixing. This took about 6 minutes total for me.

Pull the dough out and shape this into a ball like this. Oil the surface, place into a bowl and cover with a cloth. Let this sit out in a warm temperature for about 2 hours, after which point it should become puffy. Pour it out onto a floured surface, and using a floured rolling pin, roll the dough out to about 1 cm or half an inch thick. 

Next, we are going to want to punch out the donut shape. I have this cylindrical form and I experimented with a few different things to get the dough centers punched out, in the end, this I love new york shot glass worked. Place the punched out donuts onto a parchment paper-lined tray and allow to rise for 45 minutes, or until they get puffy.

Making the Glaze

While we wait we can make the donut icing or glaze.

Making the icing

We need to heat up 16 grams or 2 tablespoons of milk and 55 grams or ¼ cup of butter along with 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Once everything is melted, add in 100 grams or 1 cup of powdered sugar. Stir this all up and we are done with the glaze. Now honestly this was nowhere near enough glaze, so I would double or even triple this. I have all of the ingredient amounts I used in the description below.  Now for some silly reason I wanted to add food coloring to mine to get some cool colors, in the end it didn’t really make a difference, I am not so good at the decoration game if you guys can’t tell by now. 

Frying the Donuts

Once our glaze is done we can heat up some oil to fry the donuts in. I am actually using peanut oil because I have some leftover, but any good frying oil will work here. We want to heat the oil up to about 325 F (162 c). A lot of recipes call for higher frying temperatures, but I find it browns the donuts too quickly. Once the oil is up to heat, our 30 minutes of puffing time should be done and the donuts are ready to take an oil bath.  

Frying the donuts in a heavy bottomed enameled dutch oven.

Let the donuts fry on one side for about 30-40 seconds, checking to see when they are nice and golden. Once that reaches that stage, flip them over. I was working in batches of roughly 2-3 at a time. 

While still warm place the donuts over a cooling rack and spoon glaze over, but honestly this isn’t the smartest way of doing it. A better way would be to have a bowl full of glaze and dip the warm donuts in. This was a messy and inefficient way and I wouldn’t recommend it. Not having enough glaze gave me the opportunity to get creative, so I mixed cinnamon and sugar together and tossed the rest of the donuts and holes into it. 

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Condensed Recipe:

Donut Dough:

• 1/3 cup [70 grams] - Butter

• 2 eggs

• 2/3 cup [150 mL] - Milk

• Dash of Nutmeg

• 3.5 cups [450 grams] - All-Purpose Flour

• 1/3 cup [68 grams] - Granulated sugar

• 1.25 teaspoon [6 grams] - Salt

• 1 pack of yeast

Icing:

• 1/4 cup of butter [55 grams] Butter

• 2 tablespoons [16 mL] milk

• 1 cup [100 grams] powdered sugar

Instructions:

1. Heat milk and butter, once melted together, let cool to below 120F so we don’t kill the yeast.

2. Add the dough ingredients into a stand mixer and mix for 6 minutes.

3. Proof dough for 2 hours, then roll out to 1/2 inch thick.

4. Cut out doughnut shape using a ring, then let proof for a further 45 minutes.

5. Heat up butter and milk for icing til the butter has melted. Add the powdered sugar and mix until completely dissolved.

6. Heat oil to 325F (162c) in a heavy-bottomed pot. Carefully add doughnuts once oil is up to temperature.

7. Allow to cook on each side for 30 seconds and then pull out. Coat with icing.

Enjoy!