Chinese Donuts or Cruller (油条)

Ingredients:

Dough:

• 2 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 Tsp oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup cold milk
• 1 Tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda

Preparation:

1. Mix cold milk with baking powder and baking soda.
2. In a bowl, mix flour, oil and salt.  Pour the wet ingredients from step#1 into the bowl.  Combine them together for a minute or two.
3. Rest the dough for 30 minutes.
4. After 30 minutes, knead the dough until it is smooth.  It is very easy to knead at this point and it should only take about a minute or two.
5. Divide the dough into two equal pieces.  For each dough piece, roll it with the rolling pin for about 2.5-inch wide.  The thickness of dough should be about 0.5 inch.  The dough length could be up to 12-14 inch.  But stop rolling the dough once you started sacrificing the thickness.
6. Once done, transfer them to a cutting board which could fit into the fridge. Generously rub each dough with vegetable oil (I used olive oil) on both surfaces.
7. Cover them with plastic wrap and refrigerate them overnight.
8. Set aside the sauce pan or frying pan for deep-frying the next day.

Putting Everything Together:

1. During following morning, take them out from the fridge and let them sit at the room temperature for a couple of minutes to return to the room temperature.
2. Next, cut each dough into about 0.5-inch vertical strips.
3. Fill the frying or sauce pan with oil.  The oil level should be half of the pot at least.  Start heating the pot on high heat.
5. Stack two vertical dough strips.  Press them with the chop stick on top.  Press harder on the top and bottom edges of the dough to seal them together.
6.  When the oil is ready, add the dough strip one at a time to the pot.  Before adding the dough to the oil in the pot, stretch it with hand to double its length.  Keep flipping the dough in the oil with the chopstick or the tong.  Quickly remove it from the oil when it reaches your desired crispiness.