At Curiosity Doughnuts, we currently have two styles of doughnuts: yeasted and dropped. To round things out, we have been working on our version of Old Fashioned Doughnuts. In our quest, we have borrowed from our past experiences and the inspirations of others.
We have explored using gelatinized starches to add structure to noodles. In Japanese and Chinese baking, this technique is exploited to create a more tender crumb with a sound structure. As inspiration would have it, Aki was working on Japanese Milk Bread for our next cookbook. The texture of the bread was soft and decadent, and it held together beautifully. Old Fashioned Doughnuts often crumble and splinter, and I’m not a fan of this attribute. The goal for our Old Fashioned was to get the tender crumb of the cake doughnut combined with the structure and decadence of our yeasted doughnut.
I made a starch paste similar to the beginnings of a pâte à choux. I blended the paste into our Old Fashioned Doughnut recipe, rolled the dough, and chilled it. When it was cold, we cut and fried the doughnuts. The crumb is moist and tender, and the doughnut is full-flavored and has a bit of bite. It is not our cake doughnut, and it is not our yeasted doughnut. It is a new template for flavors and textures. Today, we achieved delicious results, and New Fashioned Doughnuts were born.
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