Sourdough Donuts Fried in Beef Tallow
Soft and fluffy with a crisp golden exterior, made from scratch with simple ingredients and no refined oils.
I love sourdough donuts because they feel like a better way to enjoy a treat at home. Instead of using commercial yeast and rushing the process, sourdough fermentation gives the flour time to break down before it’s cooked, which usually means the donuts feel lighter and don’t sit as heavy afterward. The long fermentation also makes the dough so much easier to work with. After resting overnight, it rolls out smoothly, cuts cleanly, and fries more evenly. Each step only takes a few minutes of actual hands-on time, and most of the waiting is the dough fermenting.
The other big reason I make them this way is how they’re fried. When I was pregnant with Poppy, I loved those mini powdered donut holes from the store, something about the texture. This was before I started checking ingredient lists of course. Those little donuts contain palm oil, soybean oil, titanium dioxide, and a whole list of preservatives I can’t pronounce. Titanium dioxide is a whitening agent that’s been banned as a food additive in the EU since 2022 because they couldn’t rule out that it might cause DNA damage (and to think I was eating them while pregnant!). Now that I’m pregnant again and so much more aware of what goes into our food, I don’t crave those mini donuts anymore. Most store-bought donuts are fried in commercial seed oils, but these sourdough ones are fried in beef tallow instead. Tallow is stable at high heat and has been used for frying for generations. The donuts come out crisp on the outside and soft on the inside, and they taste like freshly made, warm donuts, not something that’s been sitting in plastic on a store shelf for weeks. These are the ones I crave now. The homemade version has flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, salt, and sourdough starter. I love a sweet treat, and it’s nice to be able to make these at home without all the added chemicals.
They’re also really fun to make with the kids. Poppy looks forward to it every time I mention we’re planning to make donuts. We like rolling the donut holes in rainbow sprinkles (without artificial coloring, of course), and it’s become one of those little traditions we all look forward to.
Between the sourdough fermentation and frying in a traditional fat, these feel like a better option when you want a donut at home rather than grabbing one out. I’ve also included a cooking schedule below so you know exactly when to start your dough and when to fry. With sourdough, you have to work backwards, and it helps to have it all mapped out so you’re not doing math at 10pm trying to figure out if your donuts will be ready by breakfast. Plus all the tips I wish I knew the first time I made these: