The Best of Amish Cooking by Phyllis Pellman Good

Author:Phyllis Pellman Good
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Good Books
Published: 2017-05-12T04:00:00+00:00

Glazed Doughnuts

One tradition that continued among those women who mastered the earlier, less desirable flour and yeast, was doughnut-making. They mixed yeast doughs, then shaped them with a hole in the middle. An elderly Amish man remembers, “We’d have doughnuts at Christmastime or during butchering season when there was lard around. But I didn’t know anything of fastnachts because we didn’t keep Lent.” In that, the Amish stand in contrast to their neighboring Pennsylvania Germans who are from a higher church tradition. Those folks, on Shrove Tuesday, bake fastnachts (a doughnut without a center hole, that is fried in lard) in a symbolic effort to rid their homes of leavening agents, and to feast before Lent.

A 40-year-old Amish woman fears that homemade doughnut-making may become a lost skill. “My mother made good doughnuts. She’d be asked to make the kind with holes in the middle for weddings. But now the young folks buy filled ones.”

1 cake yeast

1 cup warm water

1 cup scalded milk

½ cup sugar

1 tsp. salt

7 cups flour, sifted

½ cup melted lard or shortening

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Mix milk, sugar, and salt together. Cool to lukewarm. Add yeast mixture to milk.

Add 4 cups flour, one cup at a time, beating well after each addition.

Stir in lard, eggs, and vanilla. Add 3 more cups flour. Knead until smooth.

Let rise until doubled, about 2½ hours. Punch down, then roll to ½-inch thickness on floured surface.

Cut out doughnuts with doughnut cutter. Lay on clean towels over cookie sheets and let rise again until nearly double. Deep-fry in fat at 350°–370°. Glaze while warm (see Doughnut Glaze recipe on page 109).

Makes about 5 dozen

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