Potatoes have a long tradition in baking. In the 1833 edition of her popular cookbook “The American Frugal Housewife,” Lydia Maria Child suggested using mashed potatoes to stretch the more expensive wheat flour in making desserts: ”Potatoes boiled and mashed while hot are good to use in making short cakes and puddings; they save flour, and less shortening is necessary.“
An 1861 article on bread making in The New England Farmer pointed out another reason to add cooked potatoes to dough, “to increase the amount of fermentation in the sponge, which it does to a very remarkable degree, and, consequently, renders bread lighter and better.”
Unsalted mashed potato is a perfect growth medium for yeast, which is why old recipes for making your own yeast mixture often recommend using cooked potatoes. As yeast grows, it consumes glucose and oxygen and gives off water and bubbles of carbon dioxide that cause dough to expand. So potatoes add lightness to yeast-raised donuts, as well as moisture and flavor.
Potato doughnuts seem to be a fairly recent invention that is native to northern New England and Quebec. The oldest recipe that I have found so far is from “Vermont Cookery, as Practiced in 1899 by the Women of the First Congregational Church of Bellows Falls, Vermont.” Like many community cookbooks, this one includes some homely maxims for better living. “It is the art of cooking that makes the distinction between man and the lower animals, and good cooks who have a thorough knowledge of this art should be entirely devoted to the gratification of taste and the preservation of health.” So it is the practice of cooking, not the use of symbolic language, that distinguishes humans from animals, according to the good ladies of Bellows Falls. Another adage from this cookbook lays a heavy moral responsibility on the cook: “Bad dinners go hand in hand with total depravity, while a properly fed man is half saved.” Those fortunate enough to enjoy food prepared by a good cook should be doubly grateful: they gratify their palate and are saved from total depravity.
Homemade doughnuts are a delicious treat for a special occasion such as Valentine’s Day. To celebrate Maine’s bicentennial year, you can make them with Maine potatoes. The following recipe from “Vermont Cookery” will make a dozen light and toothsome doughnuts, plus doughnut holes.
Ingredients
- 1½ tsp. active dry yeast
- 1 tsp. granulated sugar
- ¼ cup warm water
- 1 large potato, peeled and cut into eighths
- water to cook the potato
- ½ cup hot milk
- ¼ cup melted, unsalted butter
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ tsp. salt
- 1 egg, well beaten
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- Extra all-purpose flour for kneading
- 1 to 4 quarts canola oil, corn oil, or peanut oil for frying
- ¼ cup granulated sugar with 1 teaspoon cinnamon stirred in
Servings:
Units:
Instructions
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Mix the yeast and 1 teaspoon of sugar into the warm water. Allow the yeast 10 minutes at room temperature to develop and turn a little bubbly. Boil the potato in unsalted water until tender; drain off all the water. Mash the potato and measure 1 cup. Mix the 1 cup of mashed potato with the hot milk and mash it very smooth. Stir in the butter, ½ cup sugar and salt to the potato mixture. Once it has cooled to lukewarm, stir in the egg, then the yeast mixture, and then the flour. Knead on a floured board about 5 minutes, adding flour as needed. The dough will be smooth but still somewhat sticky. Place the dough in a buttered bowl, butter the top and loosely cover it with a piece of buttered plastic wrap. Leave it in a warm place to rise about 1½ hours.
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Roll out the dough about ½ -inch thick. Cut out the doughnuts with a 3-inch cutter and leave them covered in a warm place to rise about 30 to 45 minutes. Preheat the fryer or deep frying pan to 275 degrees F. Handle the doughnuts gently and fry them about 3 to 4 minutes until golden brown on one side, then turn them with tongs and do the same on the other side. Drain them on paper towels. Press the doughnuts in cinnamon sugar or sprinkle confectioner’s sugar over them.
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Potato doughnuts: A tasty, timely treat for Maine’s bicentennial - The Ellsworth American
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