Baked Donuts: the light and simple recipe, a variant of American donuts

Baked donuts are a soft and light variant of fried donuts. A real reassuring comfort food to be enjoyed without too many guilt feelings, perfect for breakfast in combination with cappuccino, but also for a tasty snack with which to make happy everybody. The basic dough is quite simple to make and involves the use of brewer’s yeast: follow the recipe step by step and tell us what you think.

How to prepare Baked Donuts

Pour the milk in the planetary mixer bowl and dissolve the fresh brewer’s yeast inside. Then add the whole egg and the egg yolk (1) followed by the sugar. Mix well everything, add the grated lemon peel and then the flour. Then activate the machine and mix by pouring also the oil. Switch off when the dough appears smooth and elastic.

Turn the mixture upside down on a lightly floured surface and swirl it: round it by turning it in your hands or on the work surface, giving it a spherical shape. To do this, you can help yourself with a silicone spatula, given the soft consistency that is not too firm. Finally transfer it to a bowl (2), cover it and let it rise in a dark and dry place for about 1 hour.

Pick up the dough, place it on a floured surface and roll it out with a rolling pin until it is about 1cm thick. Transfer the pastry on a sheet of parchment paper of the same size as the dripping pan. Then with a pastry cutter of about 8 cm in diameter cut it into the shape of the donuts (3).

Without touching the donuts, lift and remove the excess of uncut dough (4): in this way you will not ruin the perfectly circular shape. Then, slide the parchment paper on the dripping pan, brush the donuts with a little oil, cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled (about 30 minutes). Finally remove the film, brush the surface with a bit of milk and bake in a preheated static oven at 180° C for about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven, cool on a wire rack and serve sprinkling with icing sugar.

Tips

To serve your baked donuts you can choose whether to simply decorate them with icing sugar, as in the recipe, or coat them with a veil of icing or melted chocolate for an extra-greedy result that will also help keep them soft longer.

You can vary the recipe by adding vanilla or cinnamon powder, you can also replace part of the type 0 flour with whole wheat flour for a more rustic result.

If you love this type of dessert, try talso the potato donut recipe.

Preservation

You can preserve the baked donuts for 2-3 days, tightly closed in an airtight jar.