We Knead to Bake # 6: Baked Yeasted Doughnuts (Eggless)

Hello there folks. Hope you are all doing well. July just got over so fast and apparently all my time , energy and subsequent blog posts were dedicated to the one little birthday party that we held for our bubbly toddler who turned 2 on July11th. And due to my slack I’m far behind at posting some of my monthly bread baking extravaganzas.

As many of you may know I’m part of a group called ‘We Knead To Bake’ where we bake up some baked (yeasted) bread every month. The month of June was also celebrated as the Month of Doughnuts in the US, which was actually the first friday of June which was June 1st this year, and Aparna's brilliant brain came up with Baked Doughnuts for the group to bake and enjoy!

So see I’m laaaagggging behind in sharing this post :-), but better late then never right?!!

Doughnuts or Donuts, no matter how they are pronounced or written, they are just delicious!! 

Have you ever met a person who has never eaten these? Now how many of you din't know that this goody with a hole in the middle are actually 'deep fried' before being coated in some sugary glaze? I for one din't know until recently and my parents din't know until I made this baked version...its never too late to learn something new now, is it? ;-) But I'm so glad we did a Baked version and that too eggless and they tasted just as good!

We were given the choice of glaze to coat the doughnuts and whether baked or fried I'm a fan of the Chocolate glazed doughnuts ( no sprinkles n' all)  So I made a quick Chocolate ganache glaze making sure it was smooth and dipped my perfectly baked doughnuts in them, tapped off any excess and voila! I made some perfectly glazed chocolate doughnuts - all homemade!!

As for the Doughnut holes, I brushed them with some butter and generously rolled them in the Cinnamon Sugar that I made. 

These doughnut holes and mini doughnuts turned out to be good mid-day snacks for Manish and me at office for few days :-)

I made 6 large doughnuts, 7 mini doughnuts and 12 doughnuts holes (round and star shaped). Some were glazed with chocolate ganache and the rest with cinnamon sugar. I wanted to do some Jam filled doughnuts as well, but no one at home wanted any, so I din't make any. 

These baked doughnuts were soft and spongy and I for one ate them without much guilt :-) Manish and my dad felt they were a bit dry when compared to the fried ones we get at bakeries, but with the yummy glaze and cinnamon sugar on them, they tasted just perfect to me. These are best eaten the day they are made. 

Baked Doughnuts

(Adapted from Lara Ferroni’s Doughnuts)

You'll need:

1/4 cup superfine sugar

1 cup warm milk (45C/115F)

3/4 tbsp instant yeast (or 1 tbsp active dry yeast)

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp vanilla extract

3 1/2 cups cake flour (or all-purpose flour) , plus more for kneading

100gm butter, cut into 1 inch cubes

For the topping:

75 to 100gm butter, melted

1 cup superfine sugar + 2 tablespoons cinnamon (more or less, depending on your taste), mixed together

OR

Glazes of your choice ( I made a thin Chocolate ganache)

OR

Jam to fill your doughnuts

Directions:

1. Using a processor to knead helps but you can do this by hand. Put the sugar, milk, yeast, salt and vanilla in the processor bowl and pulse to mix well. Add the cake flour and 1 cup of all-purpose flour and process, adding a little more of the flour as necessary till the dough is thick and pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

Now add the butter pieces one at a time and process till there no large chunks of butter are left in the bottom of the bowl. Now add a little more flour until your have a soft, pliable and elastic dough that is most but not overly sticky.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead gently until the dough no longer sticks to your hands. Shape the dough into a ball and place in a lightly greased large mixing bowl., turning it to coat well. Cover with a damp towel and let it rise till double in volume. This should take about an hour.

2. Punch down the dough and roll out to a thickness of 1/2" thickness. Cut out doughnuts using a doughnut cutter or whatever you have on hand to cut out 3” diameter with 1” diameter holes. If you’re making doughnuts to fill with jam, then do not cut out the holes. Place the doughnuts and the holes on parchment lined or lightly greased baking sheets, leaving at least 1” space between them.

Re-roll the scraps and cut out more doughnuts. I used the last left over scraps of dough by pinching of bits, rolling them into balls and baking them too.

3. Let them rise for about 20 minutes or till almost double in size and then bake them at 200C (400F) for about 5 to 10 minutes till they’re done and golden brown. Do not over bake them.

4. Take them out of the oven and immediately brush them with the melted butter and then dip them into the cinnamon sugar mixture. If filling the doughnuts with jam, let them cool.

(Ideally this recipe makes about 12 to 14 doughnuts and holes )

(The slightly browned one is how the bottom portion of the baked doughnut looks like)

If glazing the doughnuts:

If glazing your doughnuts, let them cool completely and then dip one side of the doughnut in the glaze of your choice and let it set.

( I made a small quantity of chocolate glaze by heating quarter cup of 2% milk and adding it to 3 tblsp semi-sweet chocolate chips + 3 tblsp powdered sugar until everything was melted and smooth )

If glazing with flavored sugar (like Cinnamon Sugar)

If glazing your doughnuts with flavored sugar, let them cool completely and then lightly brush them with melted butter and roll the doughnuts in the sugar until coated.

(I made a small quantity by adding 2 tsp cinnamon to 3 tblsp of sugar and mixing it together)

If making jam filled doughnuts:

Put the jam into a piping bag with a writing nozzle/ tip and press into the doughnut from the side and gently press out the jam into the doughnut till it starts oozing out. Jam doughnuts do not need too much jam to fill them.

You must try baking doughnuts at home sometime and who knows, you might just love them so much that you might never buy a store bought one again! Have a great day ahead you guys and enjoy some doughnuts today :-)


-Manju

We Knead to Bake #4 : Torcettini di Saint Vincent - sugar crusted yeasted cookies from Valle d'Aosta

I’m part of a lovely baker’s group started by Aparna Balasubramaniam called 'We Knead to Bake'. Our aim is to bake one bread every month for the whole of 2013 as suggested by Aparna and post it on our blogs by 24^th of each month (ya I know I’m late).  I missed the March event due to all my busy packing and home shifting, but dint want to miss the April one…not when it has such a classy name…Lol!

Torcettini di Saint Vincent - doesn't the name just sound classy.  Torcettini are yeasted cookies/biscuits, yes yeasted cookies and not bread. They are almost bread like in texture, but with a crunchy exterior and rather soft flaky interior. They are usually shaped into twisted loops or tear drops and rolled in sugar before baking.

{ These cookies are synonymous with the town of Saint Vincent in Valle d'Aosta, a small mountainous region in North-Western Italy. Torcetti/ Torcettini are believed to have descended from Grissini (breadsticks) which were made from the leftover scraps of bread dough. According to one story, a Grissini baker had some leftover butter which he needed to use up. Inspiration struck and he decided to add the butter to the last batch of his Grissini dough for the day. To be able to differentiate this lot of “breadsticks” from his Grissini, he rolled them in sugar and shaped them into loops, and the Torcetti was born. Torcetti/ Torchettini are usually flavored with lime/ lemon zest or anise } – taken from Aparna’s blog

The bottom of the cookies get a deep brown color after baking 

They were really easy to make, and though it was suggested to let the dough rise from 1hr to 24hrs…I let it rise for 3 hrs and made it the same day. Instead of rolling the twisted dough in plain sugar I sprinkled some cinnamon into the sugar, thus making cinnamon sugar and rolled some in that.

As my parents preferred to have a less sweeter version , I rolled some cookies in plain sesame seeds. We loved both versions.

The cookies tastes best on the same day as they are baked.  They should ideally get a mild brown color but mine dint brown much. If you have eaten Little Hearts biscuits or Plamiers, then that’s somewhat how these cookies would taste. I personally enjoyed the mild flavor from the lemon zest and the subtle sweetness from the sugar. The sesame seeds on the cookies got toasted well and added a lovely crunch. 

And I went crazy taking pics and took quite a lot, so bear with me and hope you like them :-)

Here you see me getting all ready - my yeast is proofing, lemon is zested and flour is mixed with butter. I kept peeking at Aparna’s gorgeous pictures of the torcettini that she baked for inspiration while following the instructions in the recipe she shared :-)  

Torcettini di Saint Vincent

(Adpated from A Baker’s Tour by Nick Malgieri)

You'll need:

1/2 cup warm water, about 45C (110F)

1 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (or 1 tsp instant yeast)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp lime/ lemon zest or 1 tsp crushed anise seeds ( I used zest of a full lemon)

40gm 2 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter, cold and cut into small pieces

about 1/3 cup granulated sugar for rolling the cookies ( I used cinnamon sugar and sesame seeds)

Directions:

1. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water, in a small bowl and keep aside.

2. Put the flour and the salt in the food processor bowl (or a larger regular bowl if kneading by hand) and pulse a couple of times to mix.

3. Add the butter pieces and pulse until the butter is well mixed and the flour-butter mixture looks powdery.

4. Add the yeast-water mixture and pulse till it all comes together as a ball. Do not over process or knead.

5. Place the ball of dough in a oiled bowl, turning it so it is well coated with the oil. Cover the bowl, and let the dough rise quite a bit. This dough does not really double in volume, but it should look “puffy” after about an hour or so.

6. When you pinch off a bit from the top you can see the interior looking a bit like honeycomb. 

Press down the dough and deflate it, wrap it in cling warp and refrigerate it for at least one hour or up to 24 hours.

7. When ready to make the cookies, take the dough out and lightly roll it out into an approximately 6” square. If the dough feels sticky, scatter a little sugar on it. Using a pizza wheel cut the dough into four strips of equal width. Cut each strip into 6 equal pieces, by cutting across, making a total of 24 pieces. The measurements are not very critical in this part because this just makes it easier to have 24 equal sized bits of dough, as compared to pinching of bits of the dough.

8. Roll each piece into a pencil thick “rope” about 5” long. Sprinkle a little sugar on your work surface and roll the “rope” in it so the sugar crusts the dough uniformly. Form the “rope” into a loop crossing it over before the ends.

9. Place the Torcettini on parchment lined baking sheets, leaving 1 1/2" between them. Leave them for about 20 minutes or so till they rise/ puff up slightly. They will not “puff up” much, like bread, but the “puff” will be visible.

10. Bake them at 160C (325F) for about 25 minutes till they’re a nice golden brown. Cool the cookies completely, on a rack.

Store them in an air-tight container at room temperature. This recipe makes 24 cookies.

Some tips that might make a difference to your Torcettini –

1.  For a variation on these biscuits, you can make them chocolate flavoured.  If making chocolate Torcettini, remove 2 tbsp all-purpose flour and add 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder.  Also add 2 tbsp powdered sugar and replace the lemon zest with orange zest while making the dough.

2.  Once your Torcettini have been shaped, don’t let them rise for longer than 20 minutes. If you do, your Torcettini will more bread-like on the inside due to the extra “rise”.

3.  To make sure the Torcettini dough does not rise for more than 20 minutes, it’s a good idea to work on shaping the 2nd batch while the first batch is in the oven.

4.  If you do not want to use parchment paper, you can grease you cookie sheets and place the shaped Torcettini dough on them directly. Just remember to take them off the sheets while they’re still hot. You will need a spatula to the dislodge them, and do so carefully so they don’t break. Once they’re cool, the caramelised sugar on the Torcettini make them stick to cookie sheets and they become difficult to dislodge without breaking them! 

(All the tips are copied exactly as mentioned in Aparna's blog )

These were really fun to make and my parents actually ate quite a few along with our evening tea. Thanks once again Aparna for such a perfect recipe and unique cookie. Do stop over at Aparna's space to check out what the others have shared.

So until next month's challenge, well we should just wait :-) Have a good day everyone.

-Manju