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Make Donuts Yourself – Bake Or Fry The Lard With a Hole

Hardly any pastry is as American as a donut: As a kind of donut with a hole, it can be enjoyed with a variety of glazes and even filled. If you want to make donuts yourself, there are several options. It’s easy with our tips!

How to make donuts yourself

Juicy, sweet as sugar, varied: donuts are simply irresistible! No wonder they sweeten everyday life for the protagonists in numerous American films and series. If you too would like to bite into the delicious fat pastry, you can make donuts yourself: in the oven with a donut mold, a donut machine for home use or by deep-frying the classic dough with yeast. Our basic donut recipe describes the preparation in a deep fryer – but you can also use a large pan with hot oil. There are special punches available as kitchen accessories for cutting out the holes perfectly, which remove the donut and the cavity in the middle from the dough in one step. A simple circle cutter with a diameter of seven to ten centimeters and a piping nozzle or a glass for the inner hole will also work.

Fresh Yeast vs. Dry Yeast: What’s the Difference?

In contrast to fresh yeast (also called block yeast), dry yeast has a much longer shelf life. Fresh yeast has a shelf life of approximately 12 days and must be stored in the refrigerator. However, refrigerated storage is also necessary for dry yeast.
Two packets of dry yeast, each with 7g per packet, correspond to the raising power of one cube of fresh yeast. It is said that one packet of dry yeast or half a cube of fresh yeast is enough for 500 grams of flour. For example, we dose the raising agent in our Focaccia Garden recipe. However, this can vary significantly depending on the recipe. For the Franconian yeast dumpling recipe, there are 30 g of yeast – three quarters of a cube – and only 300 g of flour.
Another advantage of dry yeast is that it is easier to dose than block yeast. It can also be better mixed with the flour.

Would you like to try out your homemade yeast dough in combination with a recipe? Then we recommend our delicious pizza rolls, for example. Our crunchy No Knead Bread is baked with fresh yeast – but without kneading! Because that’s practically not necessary with “bread without kneading”! For fans of sweet baked goods, we recommend our yeast plaited recipes.

Make donuts yourself without a donut maker

If you want to save fat and thus calories, grab a baking pan for donuts and prepare the donuts in the oven. This way you get the round shape and the hole very evenly. If a perfect visual result is not so important to you, you can also bake the classic donuts with icing without a mould. If you want to make donuts with a filling yourself, simply leave out the hole and “replace” it with vanilla pudding, chocolate cream or whatever you feel like. Using a piping bag, apply the filling to the bottom half of a cut donut, or poke small holes in the bottom of whole donuts and fill them – this also works with the perforated pastry variant.

How does a donut maker work?

The easiest and fastest way to make donuts is with a machine. The devices work in a similar way to waffle irons: you fill the dough into a non-stick coated form, close the lid and bake the donuts in just a few minutes. The kitchen gadgets are available for both normal-sized and mini donuts, with interchangeable inserts for other types of pastry or in a simple design. What some people miss with this type of preparation and also when baking in the oven is the greasy, juicy taste of the original American donuts. This is only available with the frying method.

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Written by John Myers

Professional Chef with 25 years of industry experience at the highest levels. Restaurant owner. Beverage Director with experience creating world-class nationally recognized cocktail programs. Food writer with a distinctive Chef-driven voice and point of view.

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