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Delicious Raised Doughnuts
are made from one cup of sugar, one-half cup of butter, two eggs, one pint of warm milk, one cup of yeast, or one yeast cake dissolved in warm water, one-half teaspoon each of soda and salt, a dash of nutmeg. Mix with flour like soft bread dough, let it rise over night.
Turn out on a floured board, roll out one inch thick without molding, cut into rings, let rise until very light. Fry in hot fat, turning often. When cold, roll in powdered sugar. If these doughnuts are kept in a jar and heated and rolled in sugar as they are needed, they will seem like freshly cooked doughnuts.
Another way to have fresh doughnuts every day is to make the dough as directed and cut off enough each morning to roll out and fry for breakfast, keeping the rest of the dough on ice, which chills the yeast plant and retards rising. The cook must rise early to raise the dough. The first method is easier and the cakes are about as good.
This recipe makes about four dozen medium-sized doughnuts.-Annabel Lee.
A sponge-style raised doughnut with no flour quantity given and yeast measured by the cupful, which is where most of the translation work lies. Expect roughly 6 to 7 cups of flour for a pint of milk, added until the dough is soft but no longer soupy.
- "One cup of yeast"This means a cup of liquid yeast or barm kept going in the kitchen, not commercial yeast. Use the alternative the recipe offers: one yeast cake. Period yeast cakes varied in size and could be dry or compressed, so treat the modern equivalent as approximate -- roughly one small cake of compressed fresh yeast, or about 2¼ teaspoons of active dry or instant yeast.
- The soda is not a leavener hereHalf a teaspoon of soda against an overnight rise is there to neutralize the acidity a long, slow ferment develops. Leave it in; it keeps the flavor from turning sour.
- Flour is unmeasured"Like soft bread dough" is the only guide. Work toward a dough that is slack and slightly tacky rather than firm — around 6 to 7 cups of all-purpose flour, held back at the end so you can stop early.
- Overnight in a cool placeA pint of warm milk with a whole cake of yeast can overproof in a warm modern kitchen. Set the bowl somewhere around 60-65F, or give it a few hours out and then the refrigerator, or the dough may slacken and taste of alcohol by morning.
- "Without molding"The instruction that matters most. Do not knead the risen dough down before rolling — turn it out, roll gently to about an inch, and cut. Reworking it tightens the gluten and gives you bready, heavy rings instead of light ones.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe says only "hot fat." Modern practice for doughnuts is around 365-375F: below that the rings absorb grease, above it the outside colors before the center is cooked through. Rings rolled a full inch thick will need several minutes, turning often as directed; judge by color and by splitting one.
- Sugar and the second proofLet the cut rings rise on the board until visibly puffed and slack — "very light" — usually 30 to 45 minutes. Roll in powdered sugar only when cold, as the recipe says; warm doughnuts melt the sugar into a glaze.
- YieldAbout four dozen, as stated. That is a great deal of doughnut for a modern household; the recipe halves cleanly.
Raised doughnuts of this kind belong to the older bread-baking household rather than to the quick chemical-leavened cake doughnut that overtook them in the twentieth century. The tell is "one cup of yeast": before packaged yeast was reliable and cheap, cooks kept a liquid yeast or barm alive on the shelf and measured it by volume, and recipe writers sometimes gave both that and the newer compressed "yeast cake" as options. The two storage tricks at the end \" reheating and re-sugaring from a jar, or holding the dough on ice and cutting off a morning's worth \" reflect a kitchen with no freezer and a strong preference for hot bread at breakfast; keeping dough "on ice" to chill the yeast plant is a domestic version of what bakers now call a retarded ferment. The attribution to Annabel Lee \" the title of a Poe poem, and quite possibly a pen name \" suggests a reader or columnist contribution rather than a staff recipe.