Vanquishing foes

There are one or two baking (or in this case, bakingish) things that have always terrified me into not attempting. Croissants are an obvious example. Macarons as well, though I did sidestep that one by making a cheaty version that was never supposed to look like those beautiful pillows with perfect feet. (One day I'll summon the courage to make them properly, but who knows when that'll be?). Baguettes are also in the queue. Today though, it's not a classic, highly technical recipe that I'm finally going to attempt; in fact, it's possibly one of the simplest things I could make. Rather, it's an easy technique that I've always found a little intimidating - deep frying. It's entirely irrational, but there's something about having so much hot oil in a pan that seems a little scary. But I do also love doughnuts, and it feels like a perfect way for me to dip my toes (not literally) into deep frying, so here goes. I'm using this recipe, with only very minor modifications for laziness.

Doughnuts
Ingredients

• 1 Egg
• 90ml Water
• 150g Buttermilk
• 60g Butter
• 60g Caster sugar
• 450g Plain flour
• 1 sachet (7g) Fast action dried yeast
• Caster sugar for coating
• Ground cinnamon for coating

Method

1. Put all of the ingredients (except for the coatings) in a stand mixer with a dough hook and mix until a dough forms. Continue to mix for ~5 mins.
2. Place bowl in a bin bag and leave to rise for ~1hr.
3. Knead briefly. Shape into doughnut shapes and place on parchment.
4. Leave to rise in an (off) oven, with a tray of boiling water underneath.
5. Heat sunflower oil to ~180C.
6. Fry each doughnut until golden brown underneath, then flip and fry other side.
7. Allow to cool slightly on kitchen towel.
8. Roll in a mixture of caster sugar and cinnamon to coat.

Here are the freshly formed doughnuts at the end of step 3, before the final rise. I thought I'd better experiment with different sizes and shapes.

Disaster! So funny story - it turns out, I'm not very good at thinking sometimes. I decided to put the baking paper straight onto the oven's wire rack, and then put the pan of boiling water immediately below it. Obviously (at least it's obvious now that it's happened), the steam just soaked the paper entirely, meaning that I lost a couple of doughnuts from the edge when the paper just curled downwards and fell through the rack, and all of the others are very much wet and hideously stuck to the now sodden paper.

Here they are after rescuing as best I could. I went with flipping the whole thing over to expose the wet side, teasing the soaked paper off as best I could (some scraping was needed), and I'm just going to let them dry for a minute or two before frying. The original recipe said to use the steam to try to prevent a skin from forming on the doughnuts - I'm now doing exactly the opposite and relying on a skin forming to let me get them into the oil without sticking to everything!

I didn't set anything on fire, and didn't burn myself, so I'm counting this as a success. I suspect my doughnuts might be slightly over-done, and I have a sneaking suspicion that my oil was a bit too hot, so some of the big guys might be a little undercooked in the middle. But apart from that, they're looking pretty promising, if a little misshapen.

Of course, a bit of sugar and cinnamon makes anything look tasty!

So, what's the verdict? Well, suffice to say... OM NOM NOM NOM! NOM! NOM! And just look at that crumb! Despite the minor disaster midway through, these probably couldn't have gone much better. The texture is best described as pillowy - superbly soft, wonderful doughy goodness. The outside crust has just the right amount of crunch, and they taste great. I omitted the salt from the dough on the grounds that I ended up (mostly) using salted butter, and it probably could have done with a tiny touch more salt in the end, but it's a pretty minor point. I'm super happy with these though - they were definitely worth the hassle!