BAKED DONUTS

Yesterday, I was telling myself: “Let’s cook some donuts and we’ll eat them tomorrow morning”.

And I did it (donuts cooked and eaten, so the diet I was on, it’s broken… again although, cooked in the oven, these donuts carry less calories than fried).

Well, let’s go with this recipe.

When cooking donuts (or I might say any dough) time is a really important factor. No hurries. We must give the dough time to act in order to get light and tender donuts.

Regarding the cost of this recipe, I must say they are really cheap and if you take a look on the average prices given in my weblog lacocinadepeto.blogspot.com, you will understand what I am saying …

If you have children at home or you want to have a good breakfast on Sunday, this recipe can be made on Saturday evening.

For those who do not care about calories (I envy you!!!) I recommend them to cook theis donut dough by frying it as they will save time and the donuts will taste even better.

The ingredients we need are the following:

(in my blog lacocinadepeto.blogspot.com I include average ingredient prices for Spain. I am not typing prices here as I understand they could be much different wherever you may live in).

650 grs wheat flour (I have used hard white, used for baking bread, although you might use the one for baking cakes)

20 grs yeast (fresh, if possible)

1 egg

200 grs sugar

1 teaspoon of salt

250 ml (a breakfast cup) skimmed milk (for my “diet purposes” I have used skimmed milk but if you use semi or non-skimmed milk the taste of the dough will be even better).

75 ml Olive oil / 75 grs margarine or butter

OK, Let’s get busy!!!!

Pour 600 grs of flour inside a big bowl (the rest, 50 grs, will be used for spreading over the surface on which we are going to work with the dough) and add the yeast mixing it very well.

Make a volcano-shape hole in the middle of the flour and pour the milk (at mild temperature). Mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon until it becomes a thick dough. Some flour will not be able to mix into the dough so, now, add the egg and the half of the amount of olive oil/margarine/butter and mix again.

When the dough gets compact, spread the flour over your working surface and knead the dough for 5 minutes.

Make a big ball with the dough:

Pour some olive oil into the bowl you used before and place the ball of dough inside. Spread the rest of olive oil onto the ball and cover the bowl with a clean cloth. Place the bowl in a mild-warm place (20ºC-68ºF) during an hour (or until the dough double its size).

(In the previous photograph you can see a little hole in the top of the dough. I usually do this with my finger to know if the dough has grown correctly. If the hole disappears, you must wait some more time.)

Knead again to remove the air inside the dough and let the dough rest for other 20 minutes.

Then, take some dough to make balls the size of the palm of your hand and make a hole with your forefinger to make the donut shape (this is the funniest part of the recipe, apart from eating the donut, of course!!!)

Spread some flour on a baking tray (for the donuts not to stick on it) and place the donuts onto it.

 Paint the donuts with some milk (this is to make the donuts softer).

Pre-heat the oven (160ºC-320ºF) - do not turn the grill on- place the tray at a middle height for the base of the donuts not to get burn.

Bake for 20 minutes.

Boil half a glass of water with 4 tablespoons of sugar and when the donuts are out of the oven pour it onto them.
If you cannot eat them all, you can refrigerate them for a couple of days.