bake club 2: brioche donuts
let's get yeasty.
Hey hi hello!
Welcome to the last 3 months of the year?? As if February wasn’t last week?
Though, as we enter a new month, we enter the next round of bake chats bake club! LET’S GO. It was so great to see some of the flan iterations from last month pop-up in the group chat, from mazapan, to chocoflans using the marcus cake recipe as the choco component, to lavender chamomile coconut flan? AMAZING. Down to a side by side chai flan taste off at this month’s bake book club. It was a blast getting brainstorm, troubleshoot and bake flan with you guys this month!
Also, to clear up some confusion- you do NOT have to use the base recipe I provide as the base for your monthly bake to participate in bake club. You can use any recipe you’d like and put your own twists on it. If you already have a favorite base recipe for a months theme'- by ALL means go ahead and use it!!
You also do not have to be a paying newsletter subscriber to participate in bake club! Free versions of the monthly bake club posts include some brief dives into each “prompt”, paying subscribers do get the additional access to the thoroughly tested base recipe(s), the group chat/DM features to get help dreaming up and troubleshooting their bakes and getting any help with questions they may have over the course of the month (bake club related or otherwise)! Should none of that interest you, all you have to do to participate if bake your own version with in the month, with what ever base recipe you’d like to riff off of (but, always be sure to credit the person whose recipe you’re adapting)! Then, if you want, share pics & tag on Instagram to be included in the end of the month bake club round up!
For October I’m excited to dive into all things brioche donuts with ya. If you’ve followed me on insta for a while, you know that while most people know me for cake, my true love lies with brioche donuts (and croissants duh). While there are many types that fall under the donut umbrella: cake donuts, crullers, fritters and other old fashioned varieties, this month we dive into my favorite yeasted brioche donuts.
Typically, a yeasted donut shop donut is a lean yeasted dough, with no butter. Sometimes they’ll have shortening or lard of some sort for a softer texture and chew. But, with a fried brioche donut the presence (and amount) of butter in addition to a higher ratio of eggs in the dough gives the final donut more flavor, and a melt in your mouth experience.
Donuts are also a great blank canvas for flavor play since you can glaze or fill them with just about anything you can think of. Curds, pastry creams, mousses, whipped cream, jam. You know me, I’m all about the fillings, and I look at things like cake or donuts as the most appropriate vessel to stuff my face with loads of creamy fillings.
While this recipe was developed to be donuts, the base brioche recipe works well for you to create dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, baked brioche tarts, babkas and any other brioche based bake- a great mother dough if you will! Let’s take a look at the key ingredients and why I chose them:
Bread/AP Flour: While you can get away with making this recipe with All-Purpose flour (which I’ve done in a pinch plenty of times), brioche donuts benefit from the added structure that the higher protein percentage in bread flour offers.I’ll always reach for King Arthur, for bread or AP, especially in a pinch since their AP has a higher protein percentage at 11.7% than most other brands which can range from 9-11%. Brioche dough made with AP while it will pass the window pane test for gluten formation will still lack structure. Instead of rising up like brioche made with bread flour, AP only dough tends to “flatten” out during the proofing process making the dough a little harder to handle.
I usually keep the brioche “plain” in terms of adding flavor and put all the flavoring efforts into the fillings. But, sometimes I’ll swap in Rouge de Bordeaux or spelt or red fife flours in the dough. Which are also higher in protein content and add complex flavor and more nutrition to the dough. As a general rule of thumb you can swap out about 20% of the flour in a recipe for whole wheat without having to adjust the hydration of a recipe. So play around with some grains this month as a form of flavor in the dough and fillings the complement the flavors of the wheat. :)
Rice Flour: I’ve made the following brioche recipe the exact same for years and never touched or tweaked it until recently, even though for the most part all of my recipes as I make them are in flux as I push the boundaries and make them “better’ every few months. A few months ago, I wanted to play around with brioche donuts that had more of the nostalgic donut shop glazed donut vibe- just with the buttery rich flavor brioche offers. So I started playing around with some alt flours/starches. Subbing in cornstarch, tapioca starch which did make for a lighter donut. But, eventually i landed on rice flour (non-glutinous, made form long-grain rice, where as glutinous is made from short-grain rice and will provide a more chewy and mochi like texture). Rice flour, is gluten-free and when used in addition to the bread flour gives the donuts and extra light as air texture that I preferred over the texture of using the other starches. The rice flour also gives the final donut a little more of a “snappy” and crisp outer exterior.
*The recipe shared below will include rice flour as this is my current go to version of the recipe, though it is my classic brioche recipe with a portion of the bread flour swapped for rice flour. You can just use all bread flour as well*
Kosher Salt: You know me, I’m all about my salt in baked goods. But, the specific amount used in the recipes is not only for flavor, it’s going to slow down the rate at which the yeast ferments allowing for better over-all flavor development. If you add less salt, the yeast can become overactive and over-ferment leading to a yeasty, alcoholic flavor. Add too much salt and you run the risk of killing the yeast and halting the fermentation process all together.
Yeast: I mean, obviously the star of a yeasted donut. Yeast is what leavens the dough over a process called fermentation. It feeds on the sugars in the dough creating gases that cause the dough to rise. My favorite yeast to use is cake/fresh yeast- the flavor is unmatched. But, this can be harder to source for home bakers and also more temperamental to work with. It doesn’t last as long in the fridge either. So, in a home setting I’ve switched to only working with SAF gold instant yeast which is ideal for breads with a higher sugar content, not so much for lean doughs. Gold yeast is also ideal if you plan on freezing your dough before baking or frying. Though, this can be subbed gram for gram with instant yeast, should you not be able to get your hands on it.
The amount of yeast you add is also crucial. I’ve seen this happen a handful of times where a cook wants to speed up the time they have to wait for bread to proof so they add more yeast, and well then the dough becomes over fermented resulting in a dense and flat final product. You want to the fermentation process to be slow and steady for best outcomes. Have I mentioned recently ratios and percentages are everything?
Eggs: Eggs contribute to the rise and richness of the brioche dough. For a while I tinkered around with a higher egg white to yolk ratio, while chasing that classic donut shop snappy yet chewy exterior bite. Which it did achieve, but egg whites are also a drying agent, so the donuts made with more whites tended to dry out quicker than those made with whole eggs.
Milk/Water: Honestly, in bread doughs, I’ll use milk and water pretty interchangeably. Because what is milk if not just water with a little fat in it. It mostly depends on what I have on hand and where it’s being used. No milk? Well I’m not leaving the house to pick up a gallon to use 90 grams for a recipe… be so fucking for real. So like AP and bread flour above I swap out in a pinch.
The liquids are there to hydrate the flour/starches and start the gluten formation process. The liquids also produce steam during the baking/frying process which also helps to give rise to the donuts. I do find that donuts made with water have a touch more of a rise when fried- nothing crazy. Where as donuts with milk as the liquid are a little richer.
Buttermilk powder: I have a love for all milk powders, especially buttermilk. It adds a subtle tang to the dough. It’s also an added form of fat, which fat is a tenderizer so we’re getting extra plush crumb and texture from the addition of buttermilk powder. It can be swapped for regular milk powder, or shit even goat milk powder if you’re feeling frisky. Ultimately, if you don’t want to keep another ingredient on hand, you can omit the powder and still have perfectly delicious donuts.
BUTTER: Honestly, the MF’n star of brioche, the reason we are all here. Butter brings flavor, duh I’ve said it 100 times already! Most brioche recipes can have anywhere from 30-70% butter by weight of the flour in the dough. This recipe sits humbly at around 50% butter. Not enough butter and the flavor is lacking, too much butter though and once again you’re dealing with “puddly” brioche that flattens out while proofing- while it would make for a super soft and supple donut, it’s not ideal in terms of handling. But, you know- do you with this recipe. This is where you want to use the high quality butter, the high fat 82-83% butter fat butters, the plugras, the tilamooks, the isigny if you’re balling. The top shelf shit. This makes a world of difference in the final outcome of your donuts. I literally do not care if you go to the 99 cents store for all the other ingredients to make donuts as long as you take the care to splurge on the butter. (But, yes you can still use lower fat butters and achieve great results)
Temperature: The most important ingredient to this recipe is temperature. I like the call temperature an ingredient, in the same way I refer to common sense as an ingredient in the kitchen. Everything, from the eggs, to the milk or water to the butter, to the actual temp of your kitchen should be cold. (Donut making is exponentially harder on a hot day, plan accordingly). We don’t want the final temp of the dough to exceed 78F as this can cause the dough to over ferment. So to start you want all the ingredients to be cold so as the move around in the mixer and create friction and inevitably start to warm up the dough itself doesn’t get to warm. Especially in a butter rich dough, if it gets too warm the butter will split and leave you with an oily dough that leeches butter during the proofing process, which we don’t want. We want all the butter to stay IN the dough for best results.
Some tips for donut making!!
Wooden chopsticks work great for flipping the donuts- gently push down on one edge and watch the donuts somersault!
You can also use a fork! When using a fork though I like to flip from under the donut.
Keep a quick read thermometer handy to check the oil temp and adjust as needed! If the oil gets too hot you can add some more oil from the bottle to help bring the temp down quicker! You can also opt for a table top fryer (if you fry often!), this will maintain the oil temp without you having to constantly mess around with the flame on the range.
When sugaring the donuts don’t let them cool down too much otherwise the sugar won’t stick to the donut!
Oil temp is important for donuts! If you add the dough to the oil when it’s too cold it will soak up a lot of the oil in the time it takes to finish. On the other hand too hot oil will lead to dark donuts with raw centers.
As the donuts fry the moisture within is what creates the bubbling around the dough. When the bubbling stops and the donuts are golden is ultimately when it’s time to flip. Focus on the visuals cues in conjunction with the timing outlined in the directions.
When it comes to brioche donuts, you can shape them really however you’d like. Roll out the dough, punch out circles for glazed donuts or roll into balls before proofing for filled donuts, you can also get crazy and play around with twisted braids. Note that changes to the size and shape of the donut will affect fry times, so be diligent in looking for visual cues when making size and shape changes.
