CELEBRATING BLUEBERRY SEASON — WITH DOUGHNUTS.
Cherries may be the glory of springtime fruit, but if you’ve been to a farmers’ market lately, in addition to cherries’ rosy hues, you might have also spied a sea of blue — blueberries, that is.
According to Kim Sorensen of Central Valley-based Triple Delight Blueberries, which you can find at the Saturday Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, it’s an exceptional year for the fruit — and this year, it’s a bigger crop than normal.
An abundance of blueberries, whose season should last through midsummer, means a plentiful supply to add to your morning yogurt, smoothies or oatmeal. However, for me, the sight of these blue beauties brings up memories of a far more decadent blueberry-spiked breakfast treat: The blueberry-bourbon-basil glazed doughnut from Blue Star Donuts in Portland, Ore.
I first encountered the doughnut a few years back while visiting friends in the City of Roses. While everyone and their uncle was raving about Voodoo Doughnuts — another Portland doughnut shop, known for over-the-top creations topped with colorful kids’ cereals and novelty shapes like their signature voodoo doll — I found my way to an outpost of Blue Star.
Launched in 2012, these self-proclaimed “donuts for grownups” feature an 18-hour brioche-style dough topped with flavors like passion fruit with cocoa nibs, raspberryrosemary and, my favorite, blueberry-bourbon-basil. After trying the doughnuts at Voodoo (and, frankly, being underwhelmed), Blue Star’s fluffy and elegant treats were a revelation of just how good a doughnut can be.
It’s been a few years since I last had a blueberry-bourbonbasil from the source, but I was recently reminded of them when I stumbled upon a YouTube video that showcased Blue Star’s location in Tokyo. Turns out Blue Star’s been busy since I was last in Portland. In addition to opening its Japan shop in 2015, it also opened a store in Manhattan Beach (Los Angeles County) in January. But still nothing in the Bay Area.
When I spied the pints of fresh, start-of-the-season blueberries at the farmers’ market, I knew I wanted to re-create Blue Star’s recipe at home, which would require a bit of recipe sleuthing.
It turns out I didn’t have to look far for clues.
I found a Serious Eats profile of the doughnut shop from a few years back, which provided solid hints to the secrets that make these doughnuts so special. Along with the epic 18-hour rising process and frying the doughnuts at a lower oil temperature, Blue Star uses higher-infat European-style butter, along with a high gluten flour, which gives the fried sweets a lovely chewy texture. The dough is also flavored with a bit of orange extract, vanilla paste and mace. The profile failed, however, to provide an actual recipe.
After thumbing through a number of cookbooks to research brioche doughnut recipes, I settled on a recipe from “Bouchon Bakery” by Thomas Keller and Sebastien Rouxel (Artisan; $50), which seemed to most closely mirror the Blue Star techniques documented in the Serious Eats piece.
To Keller’s base recipe I added a bit of orange extract and mace, and extended the dough’s fermentation and proofing periods to mimic Blue Star’s lengthy process. I was also curious about the differences in using all-purpose flour (called for in Keller’s book) versus Blue Star’s preference for a flour that’s higher in gluten (I used bread flour). While the all-purpose version was perfectly lovely, the doughnuts made with bread flour had a satisfying fluffy chew that reminded me more of the Blue Star doughnuts.
Back to blueberries, which inspired this adventure. In my research for the glaze, I struck gold — Blue Star shared its glaze recipe in season four of the Cooking Channel’s show “Unique Sweets.” The original recipe yielded a whopping 2 quarts of the glaze; great for the high turnover of the doughnut shop, but a bit over-the-top for what a home cook would need to glaze a small batch of doughnuts (though the extra would be good drizzled on top of a vanilla pound cake or blueberry muffins), so I tweaked the proportions.
In the end, I can happily say that while my version might not be the real McCoy, it certainly captures the spirit of the original, and most importantly, is a perfect treat for blueberry season.