Yeasted Doughnuts

The best doughnuts are the freshest doughnuts, and the freshest doughnuts are the ones you make yourself.

That’s true for all doughnuts but especially true for yeasted doughnuts. When you bite into one that’s freshly fried, the soft, gently elastic dough yields in a way that feels satisfying and indulgent even before you taste just how buttery it is, and the glossy glaze dissolves in your mouth without a trace of graininess. Those ephemeral qualities won’t just satiate your craving for sweets; they’ll delight you—and ruin your taste for anything that’s more than a few hours out of the oil.

That’s what happened to me, and it’s why I spent the better part of two months sweating over my ideal yeasted doughnut formula. I rolled, cut, and fried my way through cloyingly rich doughs and leaner ones with bready chew; battled gas bubbles that made the doughnuts puff up—and deflate—like balloons; and learned that the pale ring that forms around the doughnut’s midsection is a sign of a properly risen, light doughnut. The results—as iconic as what you’d get from the best doughnut shop, but fresher—were worth it. Plus, knowing that I can churn out pro-caliber sweets has been so empowering that I’ve since wondered, as Homer Simpson famously did, if there’s anything doughnuts can’t do.

D’oh

Yeasted doughnuts are made from bread dough enriched with fat, sugar, and dairy. You stir together flour, sugar, and yeast in a stand mixer; moisten the dry ingredients with milk or water and eggs and mix to form a cohesive mass; work in salt and softened butter (waiting to add the salt and fat allows plenty of gluten to develop); and knead until the