Artisan Doughnuts with Preferment Lehmann Dough 5/29/2010

The Preferment Lehmann dough has served me well, in many attempts at pizza and also to use in different experiments.  My hat is off to Pete-zza (Peter) for coming up with the Preferment Lehmann dough for me to use. :)

I tried Artisan Doughnuts with this frozen dough.  I wanted to try a little something different with this experiment.  I wanted to see if I timed cook the frozen dough for 1 minute, if the yeast still would be okay.  When I timed cooked the dough for 1 minute at high power, there developed a big bubble in the one side of the dough.  I thought, that isn’t good.  My microwave is an old model, from GE.  In my former life I worked at RCA for 15 years.  They had a family store and I could purchased RCA items or GE items, a lot cheaper there.  It is a lot bigger than the newer models and doesn’t have a turn table, but the microwave has never broken down.  I then just time defrosted the dough for 1 minute.  The part that had a big bubble became tough, so I cut it off with a scissors.

I floured the dough. The dough was then opened like a pizza.  I couldn’t find my doughnut cutter.  I think I had it at market to experiment with.  I just use a big cup and another coffee measuring container to make the circle and then the hole. I did flour the doughnuts and holes again before placing on parchment paper.

After I cut all the doughnuts out, there was leftover dough.  I reballed the leftover dough and left it sit for about 10 minutes.  Then I stretched it again.  It was harder to stretch than the first time, but I managed to get two more doughnuts and some holes.

I heated the deep-fryer and fried the Artisan Doughnuts.  What surprised me the most was the dough that was reballed became more airy and the doughnuts were higher when fried.  I don’t really understand what happened, but when I was opening the dough for the second time, it didn’t want to stretch very well, so that might be why it became higher.

The finished doughnuts was either glazed, sprinkled with sugar or cinnamon and sugar.  I decorated one that was glazed to remind me of the problems I had in this thread with all the snow and coldness.  I don’t really like when it gets hot, but I will take it over all that snow and coldness.  The best thing about summer for me is I really like to work outside.  I like to play in the dirt almost as much as I like making dough.  I guess there is something about the smell of dirt and the smell of dough that I really like.

There was one other thing I wanted to experiment with this dough.  I covered the dough on the parchment paper with wax paper to see if it would keep the dough moist.  It did.

Norma