Nuts about Doughnuts

Brian Brooks is more likely to follow blueprints than a recipe card.

A project manager at the University of Maine and a carpenter by trade, Brooks admits baking is not one of his passions, but making doughnuts is. It brings him back to his childhood growing up in Orono. His mother and grandmother would get together and have “Doughnut Day,” when they would make colossal batches of doughnuts. It was an all-day affair that Brooks never missed.

“We would give a lot of them away,” he says. “It was really just a day to be together and do something fun.”

The doughnut recipe is one of dozens his mother, Geneva, hand-wrote on plain white index cards so that Brooks and his wife, Mary Ellen, could continue the family tradition.

“My mother never referred to her written recipes because she had memorized them all,” Brooks says. Mary Ellen took her mother-in-law’s recipe file when Geneva lost her battle with breast cancer in 1978 so she could pass the recipes on to her own children.

In high school, Mary Ellen spent a lot of time at her boyfriend’s house. “I learned how to cook from Geneva, not my own mother,” she says.

Many married women know that their husbands will inevitably say the words “My mother made the best . . . ,” but Mary Ellen doesn’t mind because it’s true. She bakes from Geneva’s recipes—because they’re delicious and, she says, because it reminds them all how fortunate they were to have had her in their lives.

The doughnut recipe is one that Brooks loves sharing with his two daughters—because it brings back happy memories for him and because making doughnuts is fun. Though the batches have gotten smaller, doughnut making is still a family event with Brooks as the head baker.

“I don’t get too involved,” says Mary Ellen. “He's particular about how it’s done.”

There are two basic types of doughnuts—raised and cake. Raised doughnuts require a yeast-based dough and are generally heavier and larger than cake doughnuts, the kind Brooks is making today.

He sets to work measuring the ingredients directly into the electric mixer. The recipe is relatively simple. In no time at all, Brooks is scooping the batter onto a pastry cloth. A quick dusting of flour and a few rolls with a rolling pin and he’s ready to see if things have come together as expected.

“The trick is to have the dough the right consistency,” Brooks says. You want the dough relatively thin, about 1/4 of an inch. Too thick and your doughnuts may not cook all the way through—too thin and they’ll be too delicate to handle.

Once he has coaxed the dough into a workable canvas, he gets to work punching out rings with his cutter—a real Dunkin' Donuts beauty from back in the day when the doughnuts were made locally from scratch every morning. In the late 1960s when Dunkin’ Donuts on Main Street in Bangor was an actual bakery, Brooks’ father was a regular. He befriended one of the bakers, who gave him the cutter as a gift. Over the years every doughnut Brooks has made has been cut with that cutter. While it’s handy (it makes the doughnut and cuts out the hole all in one motion) Brooks says it isn’t necessary to have one. Circular cookie cutters or even two different-sized glasses can work just as well.

Once he has a decent pile of rings and holes, it’s time to check the fryer. Usually Brooks uses his mother’s old cast iron skillet to fry up his doughnuts, but today he’s trying out his new electric deep fryer, a Christmas gift from his wife.

Although you don’t need anything special to cook up doughnuts, a deep pot or skillet is a must and a temperature gauge will make the process easier. Brooks is surprised at how much faster the electric fryer heats up; the built-in digital thermometer indicates it’s time for the oil, or, in Brooks’ case, lard. Although he says he’s thinking he just might retire the old skillet, he knows that he’ll always use lard, just like his mother and grandmother did. “It makes for the best doughnuts.”

Brooks melts down three blocks of lard. Once the lard has reached 375° it’s ready to go. He places a few of the holes into the fryer to test the readiness of the lard.

“The holes will cook on one side, and then flip themselves over to finish on the other side,” he says. This is what he uses to gauge how long his doughnuts will need to cook. The rings don’t do the handy little flip trick and must be turned manually.

The doughnuts only take about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes on each side to reach golden-brown perfection. Brooks lifts them out with a slotted spoon and gives each one a little shake to drain some fat and then lays them on a cooling rack lined with paper towels. It’s a good idea to put something similar underneath to catch any fat that may drip off while the doughnuts are cooling.

At this point, Brooks explains, “You can leave them ‘naked,’” and let them cool as-is, or “you can ‘dress’ them in sugar or glaze.” Today he’s making “naked” doughnuts.

“The best way to eat a day-old plain doughnut is to slice them like a bagel, and toast them,” Brooks says. “You can't do that if they have sugar on them.”

When he wants sugar-coated doughnuts, he lets them cool and then gives them a quick shake in a paper bag with some granulated sugar. If you do it while the doughnuts are warm, the sugar will melt and you’ll be left with sticky, soggy doughnuts.

While making doughnuts may seem like a real process, especially when you can go to your local doughnut shop drive-through, one taste of the warm delights will make you a believer.

“There’s nothing like a homemade doughnut and a cup of coffee,” Brooks says.