Homemade Doughnuts - easy bread machine recipe! (2024)

Jun 11, 2019 · Modified: Mar 12, 2022 by Ai Willis · This post may contain affiliate links · 24 Comments

Updated June 11, 2019 (Originally posted April 10, 2016)

If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you know I've been working on a recipe for homemade doughnuts! My first attempt at making doughnuts wasn't terrible, but they deflated as they cooled and I could taste the oil. Mm, no thanks. The dough itself was quite tasteless too, although the chocolate ganache topping and pastry cream filling covered it up pretty well.

After some tweaking, I think I've got it down! They might not be fancy like the jelly doughnut or maple bacon, but these doughnuts, or donuts, are fluffy and airy, and just a really good basic doughnut!

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How to make homemade doughnuts

The best thing about this recipe is that it comes together in a bread machine! Add all the ingredients to your bread machine and set it on the dough setting. Now go relax on your couch!

If you don't have a bread machine, you can make the dough using your standing mixer, or by hand. Either way, you'll want to make sure to heat your water to about 104°F/40°C and add the yeast and sugar, and let the yeast activate for about 5 minutes. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a bowl, add a room temperature beaten egg, melted butter, and the yeast mixture. Knead the dough until it's smooth and elastic. Put your dough into a bowl that's been greased with butter or oil, cover with plastic wrap and put it somewhere warm to let it rise until it doubles in size.

Take the dough out onto a floured surface and roll it out to about ½in/1.3cm in thickness. Cut out 3in/8cm circles using a cookie cutter. A glass works well if you don't own a circle cookie cutter. Cut out a circle in the center. I used the larger end of an extra large piping tip. These can be fried into doughnut holes!

Cover the doughnuts with plastic wrap, set it somewhere warm and let it rise again until it doubles in size. Mine took about 30 minutes at 95°F/35°C. Heat your oil to 356°F/180°C, fry each doughnut about a minute on each side. Take out the fried doughnut onto a wire rack lined with paper towels to drain any extra oil.

If you end up with a white ring around your doughnut, you've done a good job. It's a sign that the dough rose properly! You can glaze the finished doughnuts, dip them into chocolate ganache and add some sprinkles, or simply cover with some granulated sugar for a crunch. Do what you want! Go nuts with your doughnuts!

Tips to making doughnuts

1. Let the doughnuts rise on pieces of parchment paper. Doing it this way instead of one large sheet of parchment paper makes it easier when you go to fry them up. You can drop the whole thing into the fryer, parchment and everything, rather than try to pick up the doughnut and end up ruining the shape. You can take out the parchment paper using chopsticks or tongs.

2. Dough NOT reroll the scraps (see what I did there?). If you reroll the scraps and cut out shapes, they end up lumpy and looking like a train wreck. Just cut out some extra doughnut holes, or cut them up into random shapes using a dough scraper or knife. Whatever you do, don't reroll!

When you bite into these homemade doughnuts, you're going to be blown away by the fluffy texture! And even though it's been fried, it doesn't taste greasy. Light and airy, they're everything a yeast doughnut should be!

I rolled the doughnut holes in some cinnamon sugar, and they were equally delicious!

That fluff dough (ha!).

If you love doughnuts, try my blueberry cream cheese doughnuts or apple doughnuts!

Don't forget to save the image to Pinterest for later!