Fried Dough Two Ways: Polish Paczki and New Orleans Beignets
- Big Boned Cook
- Feb 16, 2021
- 6 min read
Beignet recipe available at Baker by Nature
Paczki recipe available at Seasons & Suppers
One of the reasons I started writing this blog was to unpack and process my emotional responses to the cooking and eating process as I try to develop a healthier relationship with food. This meant (and continues to mean) dealing with a lot of ingrained responses and triggers and trying to understand why certain foods make me feel certain ways or why I turn to certain flavors for comfort when I'm sad or anxious. But for me, and for lots of folks, one of the biggest emotional side dishes to any meal is guilt. Feeling guilty for eating, guilty for enjoying, guilty for having the calories, or guilty for not feeling guilty enough about having the calories. And round and round we go.
The other main reason I started this blog this year was to push myself to try new foods, attempt more challenging recipes and to just make some damn good food as a way to focus my energy and attention for a certain amount of time every week and bring some light to a dark year.
As I was prepping and working in the kitchen on these recipes this week, I realized this particular effort was a nice symbolic statement of purpose at the intersection of these two main goals of the blog. These foods aren't necessarily new to me, but making them is. These recipes are (I would say) intermediate and fairly mental-labor intensive. They're certainly damn good food. They are also, when you think about it, a physical-culinary-manifestation of guilt. These are foods designed as an expression of guilt, of indulgence, of sin, and meant to be eaten in a last hurrah of wickedness before the penitence of Lent. They are the sin we promise to give up and the calorie-rich indulgence we allow ourselves when "the diet starts tomorrow."
But, of course, tit for tat thinking around food is not the marker of a healthy relationship. So, I did my best to push that kind of thinking aside and focus on the joy that is making and working with a dough. And to practice the alertness and dexterity and multitasking required to deep fry that dough you've lovingly created.
I didn't grow up Catholic, though I did attend Catholic school for a couple years. As far as I can remember, I've never given anything up for Lent, never received the ashes on my forehead, and never counted down the days until Easter when I could have a cheeseburger again. So my love for both of these fried doughs comes from the secular side.
I first had beignets in a high school French class, I think, as we stretched our studies of French culture to include the creole culture of Louisiana so we could experience the signature local treat. You can, of course, get beignets year round in places like New Orleans, but they were first introduced to me as a Mardi Gras food, so they will always occupy that place in my heart. Then, when I moved to Chicago, everyone I knew was talking about these polish doughnuts. Everyone seemed to have their own pronunciation, and their favorite spot. It took a while for me to finally experience them, but eventually I snagged one off a break room counter at work, and saw what all the hype was about.
I love a theme, so I decided to tackle not one but both of these recipes for Fat Tuesday this year. Obviously, most folks will pick one or the other, and I highly recommend that. Managing these two recipes simultaneously was a bit tricky. The two recipes are similar enough to be confusing, but different enough to require an endless series of bowls (not to mention washing and re-washing the stand mixer bowl.) But it was interesting to taste them side by side and note the differences in flavor and texture and how they’d behaved differently in the oil, despite having very similar base elements.
I have no idea how "authentic" either of these recipes are. There seem to be an endless variety of approaches to making paczki online and I'm sure I could find quite a few beignet recipes as well. I chose these two because they seemed doable in the time and space I have, as well as compatible enough to play nicely together.
I started with the beignets first because they have a flexibile 2-24 rising time in the fridge, so I felt like getting those in the fridge before starting the paczki would be the way to go.
I never used to actually check the temperature of my warm water when dissolving and proofing yeast, but I have been doing it for the last year or so. And it makes a difference. Water temperature is crucial to activating but not killing your yeast. And the ten minute proofing time in this recipe was plenty of time for it to get nice and active with the hot water and sugar.
From there, the dough comes together pretty simply. As the recipe states, things get a little messy when you add the warm water/yeast to the dough base in the mixer. If you've made some doughs before in your life, this one is going to look ... awful ... at this stage. Everything sort of separates and gets way too liquidy and just gross looking - but don't panic. Give the mixer some time to do its thing, and it'll work out. Promise.
I did about a three hour fridge rise, then rolled, cut and fried as directed. When you're rolling it out, 1/4" is going to seem too thin. But don't worry. These suckers puff way up in the hot oil, so really get them to that 1/4" size to make sure your final product is nice and light and fluffy.
As with all things fried, keep an eye on these kids when they're in the pool. They cook and take on color very quickly. I fried mine about 20-30 seconds per side before they were ready to be evacuated. Hit 'em with the powdered sugar right away, let 'em cool down long enough to handle (or as long as you can wait), then devour. They are light and pillowy inside, with a slight snap to the skin on the outside. The sweetness of the vanilla and sugar plays off the richness of the eggs and butter and that crispy flavor that only comes from deep frying coats everything in yum. They are delicious, and they're never going to be as good as they are fresh out of the fry, so go ahead, dig in.
Beignets are made to accompany a hot drink, in my opinion. In New Orleans you'll get them with coffee (or coffee with chicory). I'm a tea guy, so I had mine with a black tea infused with bourbon and burnt sugar flavor (as close as I'm going to get to chicory around my house). Perfection.
Next up, the Paczki. I washed all the bowls and mixer attachments and started over.
This dough is less sweet, and less fatty than the beignet dough. Reason being, you're going to fill the paczki with something sweet (and, you know, coat it in sugar), so the doughnut itself can be a little more mild. Because the dough isn't as rich, the dough will rise a bit quicker (but still not as noticeably as a bread recipe), and your final product wont have that "snap" - but that's perfectly appropriate for a doughnut. You want ooey gooey soft and pillowy here.
*Read each step of this recipe very carefully and several times. They pack a lot of steps into one step and it's easy to miss something.
This dough was smooth sailing in the beginning. Everything was working and coming together nicely. (I'm not totally sure why you have to beat the egg yolks til they're light and fluffy, but I did it anyway.) When I started to add the final amount of flour, things went sideways a bit. I was going slowly to make sure the dough could take the flour, but even using the very minimum amount of flour in the recipe, my dough got very firm and tough. I kneaded it a bit, and set it aside to rise, bracing myself for disappointment.
The dough did rise, but remained pretty tough and inelastic. I wasn't able to roll it out to the size required to make the 12 3" doughnuts the recipe calls for. I got 8.
A note on sizing: I feel like the paczki I've had in the past are slightly thinner and smaller than what I ended up with here. I think there's plenty of room to play around here with sizing so it suits you, but beware that smaller or thinner doughnuts will fry up faster, so exercise caution. I went the granulated sugar route for my coating, but powdered sugar or a powdered sugar glaze would also be delightful.
For the filling, I made a homemade strawberry jam (#extra), but any jam you've got around would be perfectly suited here. You do need a piping bag (or make one from a plastic baggie) and some patience. But it's worth it.
Like the beignets, these are at their best within the first hour or so of cooking. Cooled enough to fill and then straight down the hatch.
Overall, as edible expressions of guilt and sin go, these hit the spot. But, when you separate all that negative emotion from eating, they're even better. There's nothing inherently guilty about these foods, and nothing inherently wrong with you for eating them. Enjoy them as a treat for you and your family. Or, if you live alone, make a batch and force them onto friends. Food is love when you put love into it.
留言