In the good old times I used to bake doughnuts every First of May. When I started a gluten free diet, I didn’t make them for a long time. To make a perfect gluten free dough you need a couple of tricks in order to succeed. I can do the dough very well nowadays although I used to think that rolling and stretching doughnuts is just mission impossible.
But I succeeded in making them. Although I could not make the holes by putting my index fingers through the dough and then rolling the hole big enough – for that the gluten free dough is just too fragile. This problem was solved by keeping the buns on the table, putting the fingers through them and just stretching the dough enough. Before deep-frying they looked pretty shoddy, but when frying they began to look just like they should.
A gluten free flour mix made of wheat starch is quite easy to find in Finland but I don’t really know how the situation is in other countries. Hopefully you can find some, because there are so many sweet pastries that just call for the aroma of wheat.
PORTION: about 30-40 doughnuts
TIME TO MAKE: to make and rise the dough takes about two hours, baking and deep-frying about one hour, sugaring and filling with jam almost one hour
INGREDIENTS:
- 7 dl milk
- 50 g fresh yeast
- 1½ dl sugar
- 2 teaspoons of salt
- 2 eggs
- 3 tablespoons of psyllium powder
- about 750 g of gluten free wheat starch flour
- 250 g baking margarine
Grumble the yeast in a large baking bowl, add sugar, salt and eggs. Put milk and margarine in one pot and heat the milk up to hand temperature. Pour the milk in the bowl but let the margarine stay in the pot and keep it on the stove until it melts.
Add flour gradually, kneading well all the time. The longer you knead, the less flour you need. Stop adding flour when you have used 750-800 gr. At that point the dough still sticks to your hand (like in the photo below), but because we are making gluten free doughnuts, you just have to stop here.
Now it is time to add all the melted margarine. Knead very well until the whole dough isn’t sticking to your fingers anymore and it comes clean off the sides of the bowl. You have to use a knife to clean your fingers, but you just have to live with it – the less flour you use the better gluten free buns you’ll have. Photo below: The dough is ready for rising in a warm place under a lid or a towel. Let it rise about 1,5 hours.
Dust the baking table with flour, punch down the dough and divide into two equally sized portions. Leave the other half waiting in the baking bowl.
Use enough flour under the dough, because it quite easily sticks to the table. Use your hands to shape a long stump of the first portion.
Cut into 20-22 pieces and roll them round like in the photo below.
Let the buns rise for about 15 minutes and in the meanwhile fill a cooking pot with vegetable oil. Doughnuts should swim freely in the oil.
After 15 minutes heat the oil up to boiling. Keep the heat on a level that it will not accidently start to burn – but hot enough to make the doughnuts brown quite quickly.
Put your index fingers through the bun and stretch a good hole in the middle of it the way I explained earlier in the text. Put in oil. Fry for about two minutes on both sides or until the both sides are nicely brown.
With a skimmer, transfer doughnuts from the pot to a deep layer of paper towels placed on a tray. That is for drying all the extra oil. Don’t let the doughnuts totally dry and cool down on the paper though, because the sugar does not stick on dry surface.
Place a doughnut in a paper bag with plenty of sugar at the bottom. Close the bag and shake. This is absolutely the easiest way to sugar doughnuts.
Tags: gluten free doughnuts wheat dough
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