Recipe and flour for DONUTS

Quoted message said:

Hi, I am looking for a good DONUT recipe. A friend told me
that I need a special kind of flour to do that, is that
true ? Thanks in advance Paul

You mean RAISED doughnuts, I hope, not CAKE.

If so, any flour denoted as "bread flour" will do just fine,
and any rich, sweet yeasted dough recipe ought to do, also.
I use the following:

Add to two cups warm milk: 2 egg yolks, quarter cup
granulated sugar, a tablespoon of yeast. Once yeast has
dissolved, gently stir in enough flour to make a batter.
Fold in a quarter cup of canola oil and about a teaspoon and
a half of salt. Then fold in enough flour to knead, and
knead GENTLY AND BRIEFLY, until the dough is barely firm,
and let it rise in a greased covered bowl. After two or
three risings, roll it out into a 3/4-inch-thick sheet, cut
out with as large a doughnut cutting form as you can find*,
reserving the "holes." Place the doughnuts on a greased
cookie sheet; join the "holes" together in groups of three,
moistening the contact points slightly with water, to form
little triangles, and place them also on the cookie sheet.
Cover with a barely damp paper towel, and let 'em rise
another half hour. Don't reconstitute and roll the leftover
dough; make a loaf of bread out of it, since it gets too
tough after all that handling to make satisfactory
doughnuts.

Deep fry doughnuts and "caltrops" in hot canola oil, turning
once, and set them to cool/drain on paper towels; spoon on a
little dark-chocolate glaze**; or powdered-sugar them; or
honey-glaze them; or cinnamon-and-sugar them.

Neil

*doughnut cutters are hard to find; they seem to have been
eliminated from upscale kitchen supply stores, because the
yuppies aren't respecting doughnuts this year. Too much
grease for SouthBeach; too much flour for Atkins.

**I use the dark chocolate glaze exclusively. You can get
something satisfactory by melting 12 ounces of semi-sweet
chocolate chips in a double boiler, adding 3 tablespoons of
unsalted butter, half-teaspoon of vanilla, and then enough
water to get a thin consistency, and stiring. Or you can
take all kinds of trouble concocting a genuine buttercream,
but I don't want to attempt to describe how to do that here.

Quoted message said:

am looking for a good DONUT recipe. A friend told me that
I need a special kind of flour to do that, is that true ?
Thanks in advance Paul

I used to make donuts for a grocery store bakery and
although I don't know the exact formula I do know that the
ingredients did include flour, water, shortening, sugar,
powdered milk, potato starch, yeast, and baking powder.
You'll notice that there are no eggs listed. The dough is
basically a sweetened biscuit dough with yeast added to it.
The potato starch replaces a small portion of the flour that
you would have normally used in the dough. It helps to make
the finished product more tender. Potato starch can be found
with the Kosher foods in any large grocery store.