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Cheapest Doughnuts
Made without Eggs. 4 pounds of bread dough 6 or 8 ounces of sugar 4 ounces of butter or lard Make same way as the preceding. Take care to have the sugar all well dissolved, and having kneaded the dough very thoroughly do not let the doughnuts rise much, lest they soak up grease.
A raised doughnut built from ordinary bread dough with sugar and fat kneaded in, which is exactly how bakeries used up surplus dough. The instructions assume you have read the preceding recipe in the book, so a few gaps need filling.
- The hinge: underproof, don't overproofThe warning about rising is the whole recipe. A slack, overproofed doughnut has an open crumb that drinks fat and comes out heavy and greasy. Give the cut pieces a short final rise — puffy but still springy under a finger, not doubled — and fry them.
- Working the fat and sugar inSugar and fat added after the dough is developed will fight the gluten at first; the dough goes slick and slack before it comes back together. Add them in two or three stages and knead until smooth again, which is what "kneaded very thoroughly" is asking for.
- Dissolving the sugarUndissolved granules leave gritty spots that scorch in the fat. Warm the sugar with the softened butter or lard, or use fine caster sugar, so it goes in as a paste rather than as crystals.
- Frying temperatureThe book assumes a kettle of lard judged by eye. Aim for 360–370F. Frying much below about 340F encourages grease absorption even in a well-proofed doughnut; much above 385F risks the outside coloring before the center sets.
- Bread dough proportionsFour pounds of plain lean bread dough is roughly 2 1/2 lb flour plus water, salt and yeast. Any straightforward white bread dough works; a sweet enriched dough will brown too fast once you add more sugar.
- Butter or lardThe recipe allows either; lard was cheap and widely used for this kind of work and gives a shorter, more tender crumb. Butter contributes flavor but its water content slackens the dough slightly, so hold back a little liquid if you use it.
- YieldFour pounds of dough plus the enrichments makes roughly three to four dozen doughnuts at 2 oz each. They are at their best within a few hours; raised doughnuts stale faster than cake doughnuts.
- FinishingThe recipe stops at the fryer and says nothing about finishing. Draining on paper and rolling in granulated or cinnamon sugar while still warm is the usual treatment, or leave them plain for splitting and filling with jam.
Doughnuts of this kind — raised on yeast rather than lifted by baking powder — are the older form, and bakery versions may have served to turn surplus bread dough into something salable, though this recipe simply calls for bread dough and says nothing about leftovers. The title points to the economics: eggs were a comparatively costly ingredient, and a recipe that could skip them while still producing something rich enough to sell was worth printing. American trade manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, of which The American Pastry Cook is one, often carry graded recipes of this sort — a good version, a cheaper version, a cheapest version — laid out so a shop could choose according to what the counter would bear. The advice about not letting them rise too much reads as a working baker's note; fat absorption was a cost to the shop, not merely a matter of taste.