Baked No-Knead Yeasted Donuts… Okay but not great

The other day I was reading my daughter a bedtime story that had a particularly tasty-sounding description of brunch, featuring fluffy omelettes and sugar-dusted donuts. For some reason the latter caught her attention, and before I knew it I was promising to make sugar-dusted donuts of our very own!

Of course, I really don’t like the hassle of deep-frying, but I find baked cake-style donuts to be not particularly donut-y, so I searched the internet for a recipe for yeast-raised baked donuts. Preferably with a minimum of kneading, because I didn’t want to have to break out the stand mixer. Eventually I found one that looked pretty good— it had a two-stage rise, one at room temp and one overnight in the fridge, and could be baked up in the morning. Reviews were decent. So I gave it a shot.

I’ll be honest with you, these aren’t what you think of when you think yeast-raised donuts. They’re not all that light and fluffy, and they taste a lot more like a sweet bread covered in sugar/glaze. And when they’re warm the yeast flavor is a bit too strong– I actually prefer them at room temperature.

That being said, they’re not bad. I particularly enjoyed the donut holes that I covered in sugar, probably because the sugar : donut ratio was higher. I think that the smaller you make these, the better you’ll like them.

Overnight No-Knead Donuts (from Bigger Bolder Baking)

Makes 14 plus a bunch of donut holes

• 3 ¾ cups (575g/ 1lb 4oz) all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp instant yeast
• 1 tsp salt
• ¾ cup (200ml) milk, warmed to about 120 degrees F
• ¾ cup (6oz /170g) butter, melted
• 4 eggs , at room temperature
• ¼ cup ( 80g/ 3oz) honey or brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

1. In a large bowl add in your flour, yeast and salt and mix well together.

2. In a separate jug, whisk together the milk, eggs, honey, melted butter and vanilla extract.

3. Mix the wet into the dry to form a loose dough. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and lay a towel over the top.

4. Leave the dough to rise at room temperature for 2-3 hours, until doubled in size.

5. Place the dough in the fridge overnight, roughly for 12 hours. The dough will firm up when chilled.

6. On a floured surface, roll out your dough to about 1/2″ thick and cut out donuts of your desired size.

7. Lay donuts on baking trays lined with parchment paper, and put holes on a separate tray (they’ll bake faster). Cover with a towel and leave to rise on the counter for another 20-30 minutes.

8. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

9. When oven is heated, brush donuts and holes with melted butter and bake for about 15 minutes, until puffed and pale golden.

When donuts are hot from the oven, dip into more melted butter and roll in sugar, or glaze with a mixture of powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla (add cocoa for a chocolate glaze) stirred together until you get the consistency you like. Have fun!