[title]
If you, like me, spend countless hours every week scrolling through pictures of other people’s dinners on Instagram, you’ll surely be familiar with Bread Ahead and its doughnuts by now. These babies don’t need any filters – they come bulging at the edges, topped with a massive hunk of honeycomb or some other fancy flourish, or oozing satisfyingly with jam.
Thankfully, Bread Ahead’s Matthew Jones and Justin Gellatly (former head baker at St John Bakery) are just as passionate about educating others as they are about making these balls of joy – or, as they call them, ‘custard grenades’. Which is why I found myself pummelling away at a lump of buttery dough above their shop in Borough Market in a three-hour workshop.
During the session, I learned all about the doughnut-making process, from mixing ingredients and shaping the dough (harder than it sounds) to pumping in the squidgy filling at the end (also harder than it sounds, but only because I found it tough to resist squirting the stuff straight into my mouth). Crucially, I also picked up great tips and tricks to help get things right at home, like throwing a bit of lemon zest in to stop the mixture turning into a greasy mess.
There were, inevitably, plenty of tasters along the way, including a fresh-from-the-fryer batch of unfilled doughnuts that were outrageously tasty. And there was one seriously exciting moment when we added bicarbonate of soda to a bubbling pot of caramel, causing the whole thing to expand rapidly before settling into a giant slab of honeycomb.
Beyond the instant gratification, the message here is about doing things properly and taking it slow; the folks at Bread Ahead figure it takes a full two days to make a truly great balloon of deep-fried dough.
As always, the proof is in the pudding, and at Bread Ahead the pudding tastes flipping fantastic.