Wholemeal doughnuts using sourdough- a healthy indulgence
Wholemeal sourdough doughnuts can be made easily from healthy basic ingredients. A single batch of the dough mix can be split up and stored for a week under refrigeration or indefinitely when frozen. The dough is ready for mess-free preparation of fresh doughnuts on demand.
Introduction to wholemeal doughnuts
I live on a diet to maintain a healthy gut biota and a lean body weight appropriate for an old fart such as me. To help to stay on the wagon it is nice to enjoy some slightly indulgent treats. This wholemeal doughnut recipe is a quick version of my recipe for making bread and pizza from home ground flour. This wholemeal doughnut recipe is lean and relatively healthy. The dough can be conveniently prepared as a one-bowl mix using an electric mixer with a dough hook or by hand mixing.
The live dough can be stored for a week at refrigerator temperatures or indefinitely when frozen. When a little feed of wholemeal doughnut is required for a little treat, a portion of the dough can be removed from storage, quickly formed into wholemeal doughnuts, and equally quickly cooked (with or without additional rising time) to accompany a cup of tea or coffee.
Note about doughnut history: The origin of doughnuts can be traced back to Duch immigrants to New York. However, prehistoric Native Americans, Greeks, and Romans all left traces of equivalent fried foods.
I was also fascinated to find that doughnuts (with a little molasses sweetener in the dough) were also cooked as a treat by the whaling crews on square-rigged sailing ships. For some crews, the treat was allowed when they had harvested 1,000 barrels of oil. Unfortunately, they were often cooked in ‘off-tasting’ hot whale oil in the whale blubber rendering pot. The rendering ‘trypot’ was heated by burning waste blubber in an open fire on the wooden deck of the ship that was invariably smothered with oil.
A shallow tray of water below the trypot fire was the only protection for the wooden deck and it was the job of the junior crew to keep the tray filled with salt water to prevent catastrophic fires that consumed many oil-soaked wooden ships. All too frequent fires consumed many rotten old ships that had been downgraded to whaling duties. Often such fires resulted in massive insurance payouts for the captain, but unfortunately, the crew if they did not drown, did not get their 1.25% share of the oil value as contracted!
The blubber rendering was done in boiling water in the trypot, so by my understanding, the temperature of the oil/water mixture would only be 100C and this would not be hot enough to fry the dough. Rather the end product would be more like a boiled dumpling. The enjoyment of the ‘doughnuts’ cooked this way in off-tasting oil is probably a reflection on how terrible the daily fare normally was on these four-year-long voyages with four-year-old provisions. Hopefully, you will enjoy the crisp light brown wholemeal surface of the soft doughnuts according to my recipe.
Rising agent. The whalers of old used various non-yeast rising agents for their doughnuts. To this day various bicarbonate agents are still used to make doughnuts. Where possible, I like to use natural fermented raising in my bread or pizza bases or doughnut making. Even though it requires warmth and a little more time for the fermentation process the fermented rising results in what I think is a better flavour that is sustained over time and avoids the unpleasant flavours that develop in time for products that use bicarbonate rising.
Additionally, baked starch products in our diets are increasingly being understood to be beneficial for our health when they are raised by fermentation that naturally produces the carbon dioxide gas bubbles that eleven the baked product. This fermentation can be achieved with commercial yeast additives (eg freeze-dried baker yeast) or with more natural fermentation with a sourdough culture. Both fermentations rely on yeasts for rising. However, rising with sourdough requires a longer fermentation period to achieve an adequate rise.
Sourdough is fundamentally lactobacillus which is in a symbiotic combination with yeast. “This biochemistry has existed long before our ancestor sapiens discovered cereal grains and fire for cooking. Together they naturally produce more lactic acid than yeast alone. This is the source of the ‘sour flavour’.
The sourdough culture also provides an amylase enzyme that can break down the wheat starch into glucose and maltose sugars that can feed the yeast and enable it to make carbon dioxide gas as the leavening agent to make the dough rise. They also result in a more acidic bread with a complex flavour that appeals to many people. The use of sourdough also compensates for low gluten levels in the bread mix and means that no formal bread improver is required.
“Sourdough was the main source of leavening for breads until the mass production of commercial beers made the byproduct of yeast easily available for bread making. It also is the main ingredient of Aussie Vegemite.
Consequently, I use a sourdough culture for my doughnuts and add a small amount of dry yeast to make this healthy dough create a delightfully light doughnut. This is particularly helpful if I am in a hurry. The benefits of a long slow fermentation are evident in doughnuts that have been made from dough that has been stored in the refrigerator for a week. The flavour is stronger and the characteristic acid or sour flavour is more intense and I expect that the health benefits of sourdough will have greatly increased.
I was, at first, a little apprehensive about keeping my sourdough ‘plant’ with the desirable bugs and not unwanted bugs and moulds. However, this is not an issue as a well-maintained sourdough culture ‘gravitates towards an appropriate and safe mix of bacteria, yeasts and enzymes that are safe for the purpose. This naturally happens when flour and water are allowed to ferment together. This would have made a great alternative leavening agent for those old-time whalers on their four-year voyages.
Wholemeal sourdough doughnut recipe
As always, my recipe introduction is very long, but the recipe is mercifully short , lazy and brief.
Wholemeal doughnut ingredients
The amounts used are suitable for mixing in a heavy kitchen beater with a dough hook or similar. Alternatively, a thinner mix can be beaten by hand to give a good gluten release after which the remaining flour can then be added to make the mix have a bread dough texture.
- 2 cups of wholemeal flour,
- 0.5 cup of vanilla custard powder,
- ~1 cup of sourdough culture,
- 6 teaspoons of sugar and
- 1 teaspoon of dry yeast.
Preparation of wholemeal doughnuts
Add two teaspoons of sugar and one teaspoon of the yeast to a cup of sourdough culture and allow the liquid to go frothy before adding to the dry ingredients placed into the mixing bowl. Hold back about 25% of the culture mixture so that the more can be added to get a suitably soft but firm dough texture.
Beat with the dough hook until a cohesive dough ball forms.
Cover the bowl with a tea towel and put the mixing bowl over another bowl that contains warm water to gently warm the dough to blood temperature while it rises.
When the dough has doubled in size mix it once more to form a cohesive dough ball. More flour or sourdough culture can be added to adjust the texture during this mixing. Thorough hand kneading will suffice if no suitable beater is available.
Allow the dough to rise to twice its size once more and it is ready for making doughnuts or storage.
Cooking the wholemeal doughnuts
The wholemeal doughnuts can be deep-fried or shallow-fried in a small pot and tossed in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar after a brief draining of the oil, but while the doughnut is still hot to enable the sugar coating to stick. They are best eaten while warm and fresh and have a lighter texture if they are allowed a little extra rising time before they are cooked. Longer dough storage times under refrigeration will result in a stronger ‘sourdough-flavour’ if this is desired.
Tim
