DOUGHNUT

Overview

Ring doughnuts are formed by joining the ends of a long, skinny piece of dough into a
ring or by using a doughnut cutter, which simultaneously cuts the outside and inside shape,
leaving a doughnut-shaped piece of dough and a doughnut hole from dough removed from
the center. This smaller piece of dough can be cooked or re-added to the batch to make more
doughnuts. A disk-shaped doughnut can also be stretched and pinched into a torus until the
center breaks to form a hole. Alternatively, a doughnut depositor can be used to place a circle
of liquid dough (batter) directly into the fryer. Doughnuts can be made from a yeast-based
dough for raised doughnuts or a special type of cake batter. Yeast-raised doughnuts contain
about 25% oil by weight, whereas cake doughnuts' oil content is around 20%, but they have
extra fat included in the batter before frying. Cake doughnuts are fried for about 90 seconds
at approximately 190 °C to 198 °C, turning once. Yeast-raised doughnuts absorb more oil
because they take longer to fry, about 150 seconds, at 182 °C to 190 °C. Cake doughnuts
typically weigh between 24 g and 28 g, whereas yeast-raised doughnuts average 38 g and are
generally larger when finished.

After frying, ring doughnuts are often topped with a glaze (icing) or a powder such as
cinnamon or sugar. Styles such as fritters and jam doughnuts may be glazed and/or injected
with jam or custard.

As well as being fried, doughnuts can be completely baked in an oven.[1] These have a
slightly different texture from the fried variety with a somewhat different taste due to the lack
of absorbed oil—and so have a lower fat content. The fried version may sometimes be called
"fried cakes".

There are many other specialized doughnut shapes such as old-fashioneds, bars or Long
Johns (a rectangular shape), or with the dough twisted around itself before cooking. In the
northeast USA, bars and twists are usually referred to as crullers. Doughnut holes are small
spheres that are made from the dough taken from the center of ring doughnuts or made to
look as if they are. These holes are also known by brand names, such as Dunkin Donuts'
Munchkins and Tim Hortons' Timbits. There are also beignets, which are square donuts
topped with powdered sugar.
History of doughnuts in USA

Possible origins

Glazed doughnuts being made

Doughnuts have a disputed history. One theory suggests that doughnuts were introduced into
North America by Dutch settlers, who were responsible for popularizing other American
desserts, including cookies, apple and cream pie, and cobbler.[citation needed] Indeed, in the 19th
century, doughnuts were sometimes referred to as one kind of olykoek (a Dutch word literally
meaning "oil cake"), a "sweetened cake fried in fat."[2]

Hansen Gregory, an American, claimed to have invented the ring-shaped doughnut in 1847
aboard a lime-trading ship when he was only sixteen years old. Gregory was dissatisfied with
the greasiness of doughnuts twisted into various shapes and with the raw center of regular
doughnuts. He claimed to have punched a hole in the center of dough with the ship's tin
pepper box and later taught the technique to his mother.[3]

According to anthropologist Paul R. Mullins, the first cookbook mentioning doughnuts was
an 1803 English volume which included doughnuts in an appendix of American recipes. By
the mid-19th century the doughnut looked and tasted like today’s doughnut, and was viewed
as a thoroughly American food.[4]

Etymology

The earliest known recorded usage of the term dates to an 1808 short story[5] describing a
spread of "fire-cakes and dough-nuts." Washington Irving's reference to "doughnuts" in 1809
in his History of New York is more commonly cited as the first written recording of the term.
Irving described "balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts, or
olykoeks."[6] These "nuts" of fried dough might now be called doughnut holes. Doughnut is
the more traditional spelling, and still dominates outside the US. At present, doughnut and the
shortened form donut are both pervasive in American English. The first known printed use of
donut was in Peck's Bad Boy and his Pa by George W. Peck, published in 1900, in which a
character is quoted as saying, "Pa said he guessed he hadn't got much appetite, and he would
just drink a cup of coffee and eat a donut."[7] The donut spelling also showed up in a Los
Angeles Times article dated August 10, 1929 in which Bailey Millard jokingly complains
about the decline of spelling, and that he "can't swallow the 'wel-dun donut' nor the ever so
'gud bred'. The interchangeability of the two spellings can be found in a series of "National
Donut Week" articles in The New York Times that covered the 1939 World's Fair. In four
articles beginning October 9, two mention the donut spelling. Dunkin' Donuts, which was
founded in 1948 under the name Open Kettle (Quincy, Massachusetts), is the oldest surviving
company to use the donut variation, but the defunct Mayflower Donut Corporation is the first
company to use that spelling, prior to World War II.

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup good quality cocoa
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground mace
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons butter -- softened
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup powdered sugar
dash ground cinnamon

Method
Sift all dry ingredients together, including cocoa. In another bowl, beat the sugar and butter
until creamy. Add the egg. Beat. Add the flour mixture and the milk alternately. Mix until
well blended then shape into a ball. Roll the dough to 1/4 inch thick. Flour a 2.5 inch
Doughnut Cutter and cut it into rings. Fry two or three donuts at a time in deep fat, heated to
375° for thirty seconds. Turn once with a slotted spoon. Drain on paper towels.

Mix the powdered sugar with a dash of cinnamon and sprinkle over the tops of this warm
donut recipe.