Top Pot Hand-Forged Doughnuts - Mark Klebeck [5]
A GLOSSARY OF DOUGHNUT INGREDIENTS
Although many of the ingredients in this book will be familiar to you, there are some you may not have seen before, such as agar, and some you may feel compelled to use substitutes for, like cake/soft-wheat flour. Our recipes were developed with your success at home in mind. We recommend using the appropriate ingredients. Also, we use the spoon-and-level method to measure all dry ingredients, but whenever possible, we suggest weighing them.
Agar: This is a stabilizing agent, derived from sea-weed, that is tasteless and colorless. At Top Pot, we use it in all our glazes and icings to make them set, so our final product is less fragile. However, it does set very quickly, which means glazes and icings made with agar must be used immediately or reheated before application. For information on using agar, see “Icing and Glazing Tips”.
----
Bread/strong flour: Because yeast-raised doughnuts should have a bit of chew, we use bread/strong flour, which has a higher protein content—and thus more gluten—than all-purpose/plain flour.
Butter: Although butter is very useful in most baking, we don’t use a lot of it in our doughnut recipes. However, if you must, use an unsalted butter, because there’s already salt in our recipes.
----
Cake/soft-wheat flour: Made from wheat that’s lower in protein, cake/soft-wheat flour results in an end product that’s more tender than it would be if made with all-purpose/plain flour. If you can’t find it, make it: For every cup of all-purpose/plain flour used in a recipe, substitute 2 tbsp cornstarch/cornflour for 2 tbsp of the flour. Always sift cake/soft-wheat flour after measuring.
----
Canola oil: We recommend canola oil for frying at home. For more information on frying oils.
----
Cocoa powder: Dutch-processed cocoa powder is processed with an alkalizing agent; it has a stronger flavor that we like for our devil’s food cake doughnuts. Natural cocoa powder will also work, but the chocolate flavor won’t be as pronounced.
----
Confectioners’/icing sugar: Confectioners’/icing sugar, also known as powdered sugar, is often quite clumpy, so it needs to be sifted before making glazes or icings. Always sift confectioners’/icing sugar after measuring.
Corn/golden syrup: Light corn/golden syrup improves the texture and shine of our glazes and icings and prevents sugar crystals from forming in the glazes and icings as they cool.
----
Gluten-free all-purpose baking flour: Sold in small bags in the baking or gluten-free aisles of many large supermarkets, gluten-free flour can be used in place of regular wheat flours when making gluten-free doughnuts.
----
Mace: Used only in our yeast-raised doughnuts, ground mace is a spice made from the outer layer of a nutmeg seed, with a slightly different taste. It gives yeast-raised doughnuts their unique flavor.
----
Nutmeg: This gives our spice cake doughnuts their signature flavor. For more spice flavor, substitute freshly grated nutmeg for the ground kind you find in your grocery store’s baking aisle.
----
Salt: We use iodized salt, because its small granules allow for even dispersion.
----
Shortening/vegetable lard: Since butter contains water, it can cause doughnuts to split while frying. We find that shortening/vegetable lard, which has no water in it, works best for us. You can substitute butter, but your final product may not be quite the same. Look for a product free of trans fats.
Sour cream: Use full-fat sour cream for moist doughnuts.
----
Sugar: When we refer to sugar in this book, we mean regular white granulated sugar.
----
Vanilla extract: Real vanilla extract (as opposed to imitation vanilla) has the best flavor.
----
Yeast: We use regular active dry yeast, typically available in small packets or in glass jars. Yeast can lose its rising power over time, so we