Today I’m taking things back to basics, well a seasonal basic – pumpkin ring doughnuts.
Doughnuts are always a good idea, that’s a straight fact. These doughnuts are almost identical to a regular ring doughnut but have a less than secret ingredient in them to make them a little different – pumpkin of course (otherwise these wouldn’t be pumpkin ring doughnuts, would they?).
The doughnut dough is an enriched dough as it contains butter, egg and milk but theres also another ingredient which helps enrich the dough – pumpkin puree. On it’s own, pumpkin puree doesn’t have a very strong flavour but it helps to keep baked good moist and add a richness, you’ll understand what I mean if you’ve ever had any sort of pumpkin baked good…
I didn’t add any ground baking spices into the dough, as I found it was easy to over do the spices, a little went a long way. So instead of adding spices into the dough, I thought why not coat these doughnuts in cinnamon sugar? Trust me, that makes up for the lack of baking spices in the dough, honestly.
If these doughnuts sound like your sort of thing, why don’t you try them this autumn? I promise, you won’t regret it.
Anyway, let’s get started, shall we?
Ingredients:
Doughnuts:
450g Strong white bread flour.
1 tsp Salt.
35g Fresh yeast.
60g Butter.
1 Egg.
100ml Milk + 50ml Water (lukewarm).
100g Pumpkin puree.
Coating:
200-250g Granulated sugar.
Ground cinnamon (use as much as little as you’d like).
Method:
Before you get into the recipe, you’ll want to do some prep work. Start by weighing up all of your ingredients, cut squares of parchment paper (for the doughnuts to sit on, while proving) and get any equipment you may need ready, such as a stand mixer and a bench scraper.
To start on the recipe, you’ll want to work on the dough. Grab a mixing bowl and place in the bread flour and sale, give them a brief mix until they are incorporated.
You can then go ahead and add in the remaining ingredients, starting with the yeast, butter, egg, milk, water and pumpkin puree. Then mix everything together for 2 minutes on a low speed, followed by 6 minutes on a medium-high speed. A dough should form and be fairly soft, this is normal – this occurs due to the dough being enriched.
You can then place the dough onto a floured work surface and give it a brief knead. This is to incorporate a little more flour and alleviate the stickiness of the dough. Try your best not to incorporate too much flour, as it will ruin the texture of the doughnuts later on.
Bring the dough into a ball shape and place into a lightly oiled bowl and the leave somewhere warm to prove for about an hour or until the dough has doubled in size. The amount of time this take will vary on how warm it is wherever you place the dough.
Once the dough has doubled in size, you can knock it back. This is simply the process of removing the gases that have built up in the dough during the first prove. You may find lightly flouring your work surface to knock the dough back on will be easier to work with.
After the dough has been knocked back, bring it back into a ball shape and divide by 12, these will look like regular doughnuts but don’t worry we will make them ring doughnuts easily. Make sure you round the balls of dough off and cover them with clingfilm while you turn them into ring doughnuts.
To make them ring doughnuts, take a ball of dough and roll it out until its about 1 cm in thickness, try your best to keep the doughnuts round in shape. Then using a standard piping nozzle, cut out the centre and place onto a square of parchment paper and onto a baking tray and cover loosely with clingfilm and prove until they have almost doubled in size, around 30-45 minutes should be perfect.
The one thing you should know with doughnuts its that its better to underprove them rather than overprove them, thats one of the things I remember my bread lecturer saying.
While the doughnuts are proving, you should heat the oil to 180˚c/350˚f – make sure it’s at this temperature, otherwise it’ll ruin the end result.
When your doughnuts are ready, you can place them into the oil and fry for about 60 seconds on each side – this is the perfect time for me so use that a guideline.
Once they have been fried, place onto some kitchen paper to absorb the excess grease. Leave them to cool fully, before you finish them off.
To make the cinnamon sugar, you simply place the granulated sugar and ground cinnamon into a bowl and mix together until they are fully combined.
Take your doughnuts and roll them in then cinnamon sugar, ensuring they have a good coating and then enjoy.
These doughnuts are perfect for the current time of year as they’re seasonal but these can be made all year round.
That’s all for today guys, I hope you enjoyed. If you did, don’t forget to share this recipe with your family and friends and enjoy it. I’ll be back soon with another blog post and YouTube video, so join me then. In the meanwhile, don’t forget to check out my other social’s – Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. The YouTube tutorial will be linked down below.