Homemade Yeast Doughnuts

On Sunday, we had a little brunch (complete with Biden family sightings from our balcony, pictures after the jump) with friends before heading to the We Are One concert.  Though I had homemade hot chocolate, plenty of bubbly, grapefruit and a hash brown-crusted quiche, the yeasty doughnuts stole the show!  With a little patience and a lot of love, you too can easily achieve stardom by serving these at your next breakfast gathering!

The recipe is adapted from the Joy of Cooking and makes enough to feed an army (or a hungry bunch)!  I split the dough and made half into jelly doughnuts and half into traditional doughnuts and doughnut holes rolled in sugar, cinnamon sugar, powdered sugar and almond sugar.  There are pictures of all the different doughnuts after the jump…

Yeast Doughnuts
makes about 28 doughnuts + doughnut holes

1 cup warm water
4 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
4 1/2 cup flour, divided
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup butter, softened
3 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp salt

In a heavy-duty mixer, whisk together the water and yeast.  Let stand until the yeast dissolves, about 5 minutes.  Whisk in 1 cup of flour.  Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature until bubbly, about 30 minutes.

Whisk in sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla extract and salt.  With the dough hook on the mixer, add in the rest of the flour until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.

Remove the bowl from the mixer.  Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let the dough rise at room temperature until triped in volume, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Punch the dough down.  Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and place inside a large ziplock bag.  Refrigerate for at least 3 hours or up to 16 hours. The dough will rise slightly and may pop out of the plastic wrap (that’s why you put it in a large ziplock).

Remove dough from fridge.  On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to 3/8″ thick.  Cut the doughnuts with a circular cutter (and use a little one to cut out the center) – saving the hole in the middle for doughnut holes.  Place dough on a floured cookie sheet and let rest at room temperature for 1 hour.

Heat a large kettle of oil to 375 degrees F.  Begin frying the doughnuts once they have risen, or they will overrise and become tough.  They need about 30 seconds on each side in the fryer.  Be sure to return oil to the correct temperature after each batch or they will become very greasy and not as perfectly crisp.  After removing doughnuts from oil, place on papertowels to allow extra oil to drip off.  Immediately roll in sugar.  Best when served hot!

Enjoy!