Italian Doughnuts

Ingredients

• 1 pound pizza dough (see relevant post)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1.5 tsp cinnamon
• vegetable oil, for frying
• olive oil, for frying
• 3 ounces chocolate
• 1/4 cup fresh whipping cream

Roll out the risen dough on a lightly floured surface to about 1/2 inch thickness. Using a floured doughnut cutter or 2 round cookie cutters (one 2" and one 1"), cut out doughnut rounds. Gather the dough scraps and reroll. Cut out more doughnuts. Make sure to save the holes.
Whisk the sugar and cinnamon in a medium bowl to blend. Set the mixture aside.
Pour equal parts olive and vegetable oil into a large frying pan to reach a depth of about 2 ". Heat the oil over medium heat. The original recipe calls for using a deep-fry thermometer but come on. Who has one of those? So I just guessed about when the oil was 375 degrees.
Working in batches, fry the doughnuts until they puff but are still pale, about 45 seconds on each side.
Using a slotted spoon, transfer the doughnuts to paper towels to drain. Cool slightly.
When the doughnuts are still warm, roll them in the prepared sugar/cinnamon mixture.
You can serve them like this, or you can coat some of them in chocolate. To do so, follow the following directions.
Cool fried doughnuts to room temperature.
Stir the chocolate and the whipping cream together in a small saucepan over medium-low heat until the chocolate melts.
Set aside until the chocolate sauce comes to room temperature but does not set. Dip one side of each doughnut into the chocolate mixture. You can sprinkle them with pretty much anything - sliced almonds, crushed walnuts, crushed espresso beans, jimmies, whatever.
You can cook the doughnut holes in the same way.

Thoughts: These worked out pretty well. All told, the recipe is a little complicated because you have to prepare the pizza dough first. One might say, "hm, pizza dough is more savory, yet doughnuts are supposed to be sweet". This is true. Once you coat these with sugar, cinnamon, and chocolate, you can't really tell it's pizza dough anymore. But I think it would be fine to try to make the dough sweeter. Add sugar? I will ask Dan about this because I have no idea how to bake. That's his "metier", if you will. But the taste of the dough hardly mattered anyway. I am still sort of playing around with the texture. I'm not quite sure if I over or under-cooked the doughnuts. They feel a little heavy. Maybe cook them less long? Overall though, these are pretty delicious.

Disaster Index: 2/10