Baked Doughnuts

Cribbed from 101 Recipes Blog, but don't let that fool you.  As doughnuts, these were terrible.

Ingredients

• 1 1/3c warm milk
• 2.25tsp yeast
• 2tbsp butter
• 2/3c sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4.5c flour
• 1tsp salt
• nutmeg

In bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, nutmeg, sugar, and yeast.  Add the eggs, melted butter, and some of the milk without stirring.  Begin to bring the dough together, stirring, adding more milk as needed to get a soft dough.  You want it to be just a little more hydrated than you'd think - it's easier to add more flour later than to add more liquid if you didn't start with enough, in my experience.  Knead the dough for 5 minutes or so.

Cover the dough and let it rise for an hour.  Preheat oven to 475.  Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, punch down, and roll out to about 1/2" thick.  With a doughnut cutter, cut out doughnuts and place them on baking sheets.  Or cut out circles with a cookie cutter and punch a hole in them with your fingers.  But once you're done, cover and let rise for 45 minutes to an hour.

When they're done, toss the doughnuts into the oven for 8-10 minutes.  Take them out when they're a little underdone?

Thoughts: These were just like bread.  There wasn't any cakeyness, and I guess that's to be expected from a recipe that is basically a bread dough.  These did not make good doughnuts at all, though they made excellent bread pudding later.

Disaster Index: 5/10