Sourdough potato doughnuts

I think making doughnuts is my second favorite thing after bread. There’s something so satisfying about the whole process.

Watching them blow up in the hot oil makes me so happy. Especially when you try to flip them over and you struggle to do so because they are so round and plump that they don’t stay flipped. They are like impish children.

The secret ingredient

These beauties that came out of fried dough are even more special because they are made with potato, one of the most important ingredient here that makes them what they are: heavenly!

They fry soft and crispy at the same time. If you wish, you could fry them a little longer and bring them to the darker brown side of hue.

They are crispy on the outside while still hot, until that crispiness succumbs to the superior strength of cool air.

Then you are met with an ethereal texture that you haven’t seen in a doughnut.

When I teared a small piece to taste it, I didn’t expect this kind of fragile softness. It felt like cotton candy. Of course I had to eat the whole doughnut, it wouldn't be fair to the fried dough if I just had a bite. A bite of this doughnut is like a puff for a smoker that is trying to quit and thinks that just an innocent drag won’t make him want to smoke the whole pack.

The original recipe for these potato doughnuts is with yeast and it’s by Bojana Katsarova, one of Bulgaria’s master chefs.

Of course I had to convert it into one with sourdough. That brought the whole experience to another level as nothing beats naturally occurring fermentation.

step by step method

ingredients:

For the sweet starter:

35g active starter(100% hydration)

70g water

150g flour

20g sugar

For the main dough:

420g flour

150g sweet starter

160g boiled potato

80g soften butter(or melted)

1 egg

120g milk

120g water

100g sugar

1. Prepare the sweet starter overnight. Knead a soft dough and let it ferment for 12h at 75F.

2. Mix all of the ingredients together, except the butter. The original recipe was with melted butter but I forgot and used softened butter. They still turned out great. Also I recommend you use bread flour but if you wish you could use all-purpose. For long time fermentation, bread flour performs better.

3. Knead a soft dough. When the gluten is developed, add the butter little by little. The dough is on the high hydration so, please don’t feel tempted to add more flour. Take your time to knead it well.

4. Take the dough out and place it in a bowl. Perform 3 coil folds separated by 30min.

5. Let the dough bulk ferment. You can make the doughnuts the same day or you could put the dough in the fridge overnight and finish fermenting it the next day. I started late so for the first part of bulk fermentation, I let the dough bulk at 75F for 4-5h and then put it in the fridge overnight. The next day I finished fermenting it for additional 4-5h at 75F.

6. The dough should be big and puffy, more than tripled in size.

7. Place the dough on the floured counter and degas it with your hands pressing it in a thicker rectangle. The dough will be very soft and a little sticky. Use flour to help with that.

8. Cut out the doughnuts. I used cookie cutter

9. Let them ferment again until they get bigger and puffy. Mine took 3h at 75-76F

10. Fry the doughnuts in a very hot oil