Traditional Yeast Doughnuts

Why This Traditional Yeast Doughnuts Works

When the yeast sits in the warm water, it wakes up and starts to bubble. Once it goes into the warm milk, sugar, butter, salt, and egg, the yeast begins to feed on the sugar. Over time the dough slowly fills with tiny gas pockets. While the dough is kneaded, the flour soaks up the liquid and the gluten stretches and lines up. That stretchy gluten holds those gas bubbles inside the dough instead of letting them escape.

As the dough rests and rises, those bubbles grow and the dough becomes light and puffy instead of dense. When the cut doughnuts hit the hot oil, the water in the dough turns to steam and pushes out against those gluten walls, so they puff even more. The outside browns and sets quickly, which keeps the inside soft and a little chewy. Dipping them in glaze while they are still warm lets the sugar coating melt slightly and cling to the surface, so it dries into a thin, sweet shell instead of sliding off.

Mistakes To Avoid

Letting the liquid be too hot when the yeast goes in can kill the yeast. The mixture never gets frothy, the dough barely rises, and the doughnuts fry up dense and heavy instead of light and airy.

Adding all the flour at once and packing in extra “just so it’s not sticky” makes the dough too stiff. The dough becomes hard to knead, doesn’t puff much during rising, and the finished doughnuts turn out tough and bready instead of soft.

Cutting the dough too thin or stretching the shapes while moving them causes problems in the oil. Thin or misshapen rings cook too fast, brown quickly, and end up dry and chewy with no fluffy middle.

When the oil is the wrong temperature, the texture suffers. Oil that’s too cool makes the doughnuts sit in the fat longer, soaking up oil and coming out greasy and heavy, while oil that’s too hot browns the outside fast but leaves the inside undercooked and doughy.

Dunking very hot doughnuts into a thin, warm glaze can make the coating slide right off. The glaze soaks in or runs off onto the rack, and instead of a smooth, set coating, the doughnuts look patchy and sticky.