(Kinda) Easy Yeast Donuts

I usually think that making donuts at home is a bit difficult, but for whatever reason I never seem to have a problem with this recipe. It's probably because it's very similar to making bread. I also like these donuts because they are not very sweet. There's only a little bit of sugar that is there to feed the yeast. You can cover these donuts with glaze or sugar and they still won't be overwhelmingly sweet.

When I used to teach English in China, I did a couple of lectures on cooking and the pictures I'm putting up here are from then. But making donuts is pretty much the same anywhere.

Ingredients:
1 tsp Yeast
1 Cup Milk
2 Cups Flour (if it's a humid day, you might need a little extra)
2 TBS Sugar
1 Egg
2 tsp Butter
Oil for frying

What to Do:



Stir together yeast, milk, and sugar. If you warm your milk up a little, your yeast will activate faster. If you are not in a hurry, you don't really need to bother. The most important thing is to make sure your milk is not hot. You don't want to kill the yeast!


Next stir in the egg and butter. You don't need to worry too much about how well they're stirred in because you'll be stirring a lot in a little bit.



Put in the flour and stir, stir, stir for at least 5 minutes. If you are doing it by hand, good luck! But if you've got a powerful mixer, it can do the hard work for you. It's definitely a bad idea to try to use a whisk for this. You need something more paddle like. What you're doing in this step is developing the gluten in the flour, sort of like you do when you knead bread. The dough will become very stretchy when you finish.



Then let the dough rise to doubled in size. The temperature of you kitchen really determines how long it takes. You can actually control this to fit your schedule a bit. Like you can make the dough a day before and have it rise in the fridge overnight. Or if you're in a hurry, put it in a warm spot. You can also pat the air bubbles out of the dough once it rises, and then let it rise again. I like doing more than more than one rise because it gives the donuts a little bit of a sour flavor.

Once the dough has risen, flatten it out on a floured surface. You can roll it out and then use a cup or a cookie cutter to make donut shapes. Or if you are giving donut samples to your students, I recommend just pulling the dough into small pieces to make donut holes.

You'll need to let your donuts or donut holes rise for about half an hour. Meanwhile, you can heat up your oil for deep frying to about 370 degrees.

Then fry your donuts. They shouldn't take very long to cook. When you see them getting golden brown up the sides, flip them over. Try to make sure your oil stays at a constant temperature. If the oil is too cool, your donuts will absorb too much oil. If it's too hot, the inside might not get cooked.

Once they're finished, put them on some paper towel or something to take off some of the excess oil. Then you can glaze them, or cover them in some sugar or powdered sugar. You can try putting in some spices in your sugar or glaze, or even put in a little orange or lemon zest. You can also try putting different flavorings right into the dough.