PERFECT PILLOWY BEIGNETS RECIPE WITH CLAIRE SAFFITZ | DESSERT PERSON

hi everyone I'm Claire staffords welcome to my home kitchen today I am making a recipe inspired by the incredible Beignets at Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans these are my pillowy Beignets they are from the stovetop desserts chapter in what's for dessert they are crispy on the outside and super soft and light but also chewy on the inside they're just so so delicious and really fun to make [Music] okay I've only been to New Orleans one time Harris my husband has had been there several times and was like you have we have to go to Cafe Du Monde and like first thing have some Beignets they were everything I hope they would be and more just so delicious incredible texture so I really wanted to recreate that at home I've made a million Donuts in the past you know like I'm very comfortable with frying at home but I never really made this style of beignet and it really is like its own category of fried dough so I did a lot of research but of course the recipe is like quite secretive so this is kind of my best reverse engineering of that and they're really fun to make at home and like pretty forgiving also foreign so let's talk about the ingredients it's pretty straightforward I'm using all-purpose flour if you're using an all-purpose flour that has like a lower protein content you might want to use bread flour but this is King Arthur which has like an 11 ish protein content so all-purpose or bread it would be fine either way then I have just a quarter cup here this is some whole wheat flour the recipe calls for whole wheat or Rye or barley flour this is going to add a lot of flavor to the Beignets granulated sugar kosher salt baking powder active dry yeast milk two large eggs and then for frying I have some neutral oil a Thai smoke point and for serving of course powdered sugar essential the Beignets themselves are not that sweet so we really generously coat them in powdered sugar just like they do at Cafe Du Monde special equipment in terms of the dough very little basically just a bowl and a spatula but for deep frying you will need a heavy bottomed like pot with high sides so here I'm using a dutch oven before I get into the recipe I want to thank our friends at Maiden for sponsoring this episode and here in front of me I have their line of beautiful enameled cast iron everything is hand enameled by artisans in a multi-generational factory in France they've been making an animal cast iron since the 1920s every piece is so beautiful I have their Dutch oven Skillet and then this is a new two quart saucepan what I love about this line is that it can go from the stove top and it works on induction and any heat source to the oven to the table it's heat safe above 500 Degrees so they're incredibly versatile and perfect for all of your like fall braises and soups especially getting into the winter months but of course I'm going to use it today for frying our Beignets perfect vessel for deep frying one special feature of this line is that all the lids feature this cloud cover technology where it condenses and traps the Steam and then returns all that moisture to whatever it is that you're clicking inside so the design is just so smart plus really really beautiful and I love that it has these metal handles so everything is oven safe so you can check out this entire line of but now we'll cast iron cookware as well as maiden's other cookware at made incookware.com and there is a code below for a discount off your order so check it out now I'm going to mix the dough this is a pretty wet dough which is really important in achieving the final texture that we want in the Beignets which is super light but also really chewy with like big interior holes that to me is like the kind of Telltale classic sign of a Cafe Dumont style beignet so I'm going to start by mixing my dry ingredients and I'm doing this by hand you don't need a mixer to do this but you could just combine everything in the bowl of the stand mixer and let the hook do the work so I have my all-purpose flour here then I'm adding a little bit this is a whole wheat the recipe calls for Rye or even barley I think that actually they use barley flour at Cafe Du Monde this is just going to add a little bit of extra flavor to the Beignets then sugar about a half cup by baking powder this is kind of like an insurance policy the yeast is obviously was going to produce the gas and give you an Airy texture but the baking powder is there just to like give it extra sort of puffing when it goes into the oil and then this is kosher salt two and a quarter teaspoons it seems like a lot of salt but without that quantity of salt it just doesn't it's just not seasoned enough you really want to be able to taste the flavor of the dough so the salt's really important so I'm just going to whisk all of this together probably this bowl is too small but that's fine so now I'm going to mix my liquid ingredients I'm going to start by measuring out I think it's three quarters of a cup plus two tablespoons of lukewarm water but I'm just going to weigh it so it's 200 grams and when you're thinking about lukewarm water just know that body temp is 98 so if it's slightly warm to the touch it's probably around 100 degrees and that's what you want this is just slightly warm to the touch you don't want it to feel hot because you risk killing the yeast if it exceeds you know 115 120 Fahrenheit you can always use a thermometer to double check it's too much 200 okay so to this I'm going to add my ACU dry yeast I'm using a teaspoon after dry yeast is pretty reliable but it does need to be dissolved a little bit first you can see that the mixture is kind of Cloudy because that yeast has dissolved and now I'm going to add my milk I have a half cup of milk that I brought to room temperature I'm going to mix all that together and then two large eggs also at room temp you can see we're making kind of a modified sweet dough yeasted dough so I'm just going to kind of gently whisk this break up some of those eggs you can just do this in a medium Bowl that I just think it's kind of convenient and a measuring cup this size and now this part's really easy I'm just going to make a little bit of a well in the center meaning kind of raise up the sides of the flower so all this liquid is going to go in so I'm just going to use a spatula and I'm going to gently incorporate everything so at this point I want to get all the flour hydrated so I'm going to stir with the spatula or again the bowl scraper until I have no more dry flower areas and I'm doing that with a spatula instead of my hand because at this point it's going to feel really sticky because the flower hasn't really had a chance to fully absorb that liquid so it's easier to do this with this spatula as opposed to your hand but once you get everything really well Incorporated and make sure that there's none of there's no like pockets of dry at the very bottom once you have everything nice and evenly mixed then I'm going to switch to my hand and we're going to need this it almost looks like a thick batter hasn't really come together into a dough yet but that's the purpose of mixing and by hand this is going to take a little while this is going to take maybe about 15 minutes so if you get tired you can just like throw you know a damp towel over it and come back to it that's okay you don't let it sit too long the yeast will start to kind of activate but this part requires a little bit of patience so I'm gonna just take I'm going to leave one clean hand and then use one hand for kneading so this is what you're going to do at this point it's not going to have a lot of structure meaning it's going to not sort of hold together it's not going to be very cohesive but you're just going to take one hand kind of lift it up from one side of the bowl and press it back toward the center so you can see when I do this it breaks really easily and it's super sticky so at this point you can see the lack of structure like there's no elasticity it just kind of breaks apart so what I'm going to do is just continue to work it this way until I see a couple things one it's going to smooth out in texture a little bit two it's going to have more elasticity and more sort of cohesion so it's going to hold together in one mass and it's still going to be really sticky but it's just going to be less sticky than it is now so I'm just going to continue with this kind of kneading motion with one hand and rotating the bowl with my other and I'll check back with you in like 10 minutes and we'll see how it's coming along I will say if you do want to just sort of like set it and forget it and leave it in the stand mixer with the hook keep it on the lowest speed and I would check it after five minutes I might need to go a little bit longer but I'll show you what that kind of end point looks like it's kind of already getting to the point where it wants to stick to itself more than it wants to stick to my hand that's good so after about 10 minutes of kneading this is what the dough looks like it is still sticky but it definitely has more of a tendency to stick to itself rather than my hands it's become pretty elastic it is holding its shape much much better inside the bowl and it has sort of pretty good cohesion so it's really kind of staying together all in one Mass I think this is really sufficient kneading let me just clean off my hand really well I'm going to clean down the side of the bowl and then we're going to let it rise at room temperature [Music] so it's time to get my oil heating I just realized I don't have a deep fat thermometer here but I have an instant read thermometer so I'm going to use that to kind of monitor the temperature I'm using neutral oil that has a high smoke point for this so you can use peanut vegetable um I don't know what else people use can you use pure lard you can find them tomorrow if you wanted to why not grape seed is a good one avocado is great but it's probably going to be so expensive so I have my maiden Dutch oven over on the stove and I like using it for frying because it has nice high sides and there's really really even heating I'm gonna pour in the oil until I get to a depth that's about a third to a halfway up the sides you just don't want to go higher than that because it's just not a great idea so you might not use all the oil that you have you always want to leave a little bit of room when you're deep frying like a little bit of headspace because certain the more sort of moisture there is in whatever you're deep frying the more bubbling you'll get and the more displacement you'll get as it's frying so the oil level will rise a little bit these Beignets don't bubble that much but just for safety a third you're halfway up the sides so it depends on your vessel and then Pro tip save the bottle of the empty oil bottle because after you do a couple rounds of frying it's actually good for holding the oil once it cools and reusing and then you can use it to throw it out when you're done in what's for dessert because I have a few desserts that are deep fried I do give some really helpful tips if you're deep frying at home and one of them is what to do with the oil once it's spent and how to know when the oil is spent but a lot of places have like drop off where you can recycle used cooking oil so check that out like your farmer's market might have it but if you can't find that in your area then you end up just throwing it out in the trash don't pour down the drain that will be very bad for your House's Plumbing so this is the dough that is beginning its rise I want to let it go at room temperature now depending on the temperature of your home ambient temperature it might take less time or more time but after about an hour and a half it's going to get really bubbly on the surface and have grown to be about doubled in size I have one that I made last night and refrigerated because this dough does go into the fridge after that first rise so I'm going to show you what it looks like and you can kind of compare the two volumes this one has grown in size and there's also some I see lots of little bubbling beneath the surface so I know that it's full of that gas produced by the yeast and importantly this has chilled I did let it go overnight so you can chill it anywhere between four hours and overnight it takes four hours for it to really fully get cold and the reason we chill is not only to give you more flexibility as far as your timeline for when you want to fry them but also because the dough is a lot easier to handle when it's cold so you do want to use it straight from the fridge so this one I'll put aside will rise and then throw it in the fridge but this one's ready to go so I'm going to move on to the next stage which is forming the Beignets and frying I'm going to start my oil heating while I form these just on like medium low so when I was testing this recipe one of the mistakes I kept making was not using enough flour to really pat down the dough and cut the squares because even though it's cold it is still really really sticky so you want to be very generous in coating your work surface with flour and it's okay because when we go to fry them we end up kind of patting off and like shaking off a lot of the excess flowers so it says very generously flour and I mean very generously flour so now I'm going to use really generously floured hands to Pat this down and I like to kind of lift it up a little bit make sure it's not sticking you do not have to be gentle with this and don't worry too much about popping any bubbles you'd really just and it it's not going to take a lot of force on your part to get this into the shape that you want it to be okay so I have it in this sort of rough rectangular shape and the rectangular shape is just so that I can cut Beignets that are more or less square but the shapes don't really matter I'm not too worried about like each one having the perfect Dimension so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut them into about two and a half inch squares so I'm not even I have my ruler to cut I mean I didn't really use it I have my ruler so I'm at 18. 12 ish close enough I'm not going to measure this I'm just going to go by sight I separated them a little bit just to give me a little breathing room because the dough is so wet still that if you leave it really close together it will want to kind of read here but we'll separate more later so these guys are going to be kind of smaller so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to give it a little bit more flour and now I want to actually just kind of pull them apart a little bit on the work surface make sure that they're not sticking to the surface nor to each other if you're feeling like the flower is sort of caked on in places it's not that important we're going to sort of give everything a little bit of a shake before we fry and as I pull them apart they're getting like a little bit you know the shapes are getting a little bit irregular but does not matter I sort of like that look so that one I re-cut because I got a little bit stuck to its neighbor they're all separated they have a little bit of room there's plenty of flour to prevent sticking so what I'm going to do is I'm going to cover these with a kitchen towel they don't dry out too much so 375 these are going to rest here and kind of go through a little bit of a short proof while that oil comes up but it just goes through a kind of short little rest here on the bench while the oil comes up and you'll notice a little bit of puffing let's check in with our frying setup because it's important really for frying that you have your mise en place or just all the prep ready to go because deep frying is the kind of thing where it's like you're not so light on your feet when you're deep frying you're pretty much like stuck here so you don't want to be running all over the kitchen grabbing stuff so I have my thermometer I just want to say that my oils on sort of medium medium high and I'm right at 375 close enough around 370. it says 366 366. okay fine well let's see 370 okay 369 370. close enough all right so I'm gonna keep going be very conscious of the fact that when you add cold dough or cold anything or even room temperature anything to Hot Oil it's going to drop the temp so I like to kind of get it nice and steady and then when I start to add my dough actually crank up the heat so you're going to constantly be regulating it is easier when you have a deep fat thermometer because you can just sort of like constantly be seeing so I'll be taking the temp a lot with my thermometer here I want to point out I have a rack set over some paper towel typically I would put the paper towel on the bottom of a rimmed baking sheet and then the rack on top I don't know where any of my rim baking sheets are right now suspicion Harris has something to do with that but I don't have that so that'll do for now and then I have a spider you can use a slotted spoon but this is just going to be used for turning everything in the oil and also removing it from the oil so I'm going to start adding my Beignets also my hood is on so you might hear a little bit of that but because you want good ventilation when you're deep frying [Music] when you're doing this at home it's best for you to be on your work surface next to the oil I'm gonna have to since I was here for you to see I'm going to have to be Crossing this area but I'm not going to throw them in behind me like they do them at Cafe Du man no I'm going to start by grabbing my Beignets and I'm going to kind of grab them one at a time and I'm going to do this kind of like back and forth motion to dust off some of the excess flour but I'm not too worried about the flour because one it does contribute to that kind of crispiness on the outside um two it's not really going to dry out the beignet because there's so much moisture in that dough anyway the one kind of negative about lots of flour is that it will kind of um sink down in your oil and it will like the oil will kind of go bad faster you can even use a little brush if you want so I'm gonna one by one sort of slip these into the oil you're gonna immediately see them puff so I'm adding the Beignets sort of one at a time it depends on sort of your frying vessel and the size and dimensions I'm going to add enough so that the pot is full more or less but that they still have plenty of room to swim around so that's really important you want the Beignets to have plenty of room and you don't want to overwhelm the oil and then drop it temporally fast so you can probably get at least six in here at the beginning and they are already puffing so much but yeah so I've dropped some so I'm going to crank up the heat a little bit so these are actually almost done some of the first ones as soon as the dough goes in they puff almost immediately so they barely even have time to sink and then rise again so they dramatically puff I would say and actually they do take on color rather quickly because of that Sugar that's in the dough that encourages Browning you know I'm adding them one by one but I'm also kind of keeping an eye on the ones that are in there so I can monitor the Browning and I love how they just get so puffy and that means that they all that air in there is expanding plus that little bit of baking powder in there is also causing that puffing and so I'm still right at a nice oil range I'm in like the 360s so I'm constantly monitoring the temp because again I'm adding you know several portions of this cool room temp dough and that's going to drop the oil temp so actually my oil is still on like a medium high because I just don't want big dramatic temperature fluctuations I just want consistent frying so these cook fast it's really just like about two minutes or so in the oil for these for the Beignets per batch so even though we have a lot of Beignets to fry they go really fast now when you're dropping anything into the oil you don't actually want to drop from a pie because then you're going to Splash hot oil so I like to actually go kind of right down I'm obviously not touching the oil to be very explicit about that you want to just be very deliberate about how you're adding your dough and if you feel concerned about it you can put it in your spider and then drop it in that way they smell so good so it's important with Benny is you want to eat them hot or as like soon out of the fryer as possible if you don't want this many Beignets which is a couple dozen you could always make a half recipe but I think it's nice to have this many so now the final step which is so so important is to dust them with a lot of powdered sugar I mean like cake them on the dough itself is not very sweet at all they are so light for their size it's just incredible so I know that they're going to have like tons of air pockets in there and they have that like perfectly like look at how pillowy they are so not only are they pillowy but then you get these kind of little irregular corners and that part's crispy so it's just the most incredible textural experience to eat them so I'm going to just dust some of them with powdered sugar and you do want to do the powdered sugar right before serving because eventually it will start to absorb a little bit of like the oil that's on the surface of the beignet and you don't get that really beautiful like snow effect try not to do it where you have a giraffe like I do some sugar a little bit a little bit I think a glass of iced coffee or like a cappuccino if you have an espresso machine at home or just a straight espresso or hot whatever it is hot coffee this is the time so I want to show you what the interior looks like because that is to me the best part this this really singles out this recipe I think as being really special is what the interior looks like so I want to show you you can see that it has like huge air pockets and that the dough itself is still like there's still tons of moisture in there you got it crispy you get a chewy you get light and also I want to say not even the least bit greasy these really fry so well they don't absorb a ton of oil especially with that high temp of 375 so it's really good now don't exhale as you eat it it's important oh my God so chewy but then it like dissolves because you're kind of eating air and then even just that little quarter cup of whole wheat or Rye or barley flour really does so much to the flavor and that overnight rest in the fridge also really helps to enhance the flavor it's not just like blank white flour oh my God you should buy penetrator in the back of my throat if you're not careful you could really eat a lot of these in one sitting also exceptionally dunkable if you have coffee and you said these are better than Cafe Dumont no Cafe Duman definitely a singular culinary experience but if you're craving that style of beignet home or if you just want to try making a type of donut or fried dough that you've never made before these are so fun and also I think a great way to kind of get a little bit more comfortable with deep frying at home and now I have like two dozen Beignets that we're gonna eat it really feel like I just ate nothing that's how light it is so you know proceed with caution but anyway so much fun I love bringing you more recipes from what's for dessert so more episodes to come and I want to thank our sponsors that made in the makers of beautiful enamel cast iron cookware and so much more so head on over to matingcookware.com again there is a code below so check it out and thank you so much for watching and don't forget to like And subscribe [Music] thank you

Channel: Claire Saffitz x Dessert Person

Views: 310,087

Keywords: Beignets, Easy Beignets, Best Beignets, Best Beignets Recipe, Easy Beignets Recipe, Pillowy Beignets, Delicious Beignets, New Orleans Style Beignets, New Orleans, NOLA, Claire Saffitz, Claire Saffitz Makes, Dessert Person, Dessert, Pastry Chef, Bon Appetit, Gourmet Makes, Pastry Chef Beignets, Whats For Desser, New York Times Cooking, NYT Cooking, Food52, Delish, Chef, Chef Movie, Cafe Du Monde, Cafe Du Monde Beignets, NOLA Beignets, Made In, Made In Cookware, Dutch Oven

Id: Sr3ymJDIghc

Length: 22min 33sec (1353 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 05 2023