Ghanaian · Dessert
Bofrot
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle.
Ingredients
- 500 g plain flour
- 100 g caster sugar
- 7 g instant yeast
- 1 tsp nutmeg, freshly grated
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 400 ml warm water
- 1 egg
- 1.5 litres groundnut oil, for frying
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Deep fryingDraining fried food: a rack, never paperProofing: the rise before the oven
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · egg · peanuts
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Whisk the flour, sugar, yeast, nutmeg and salt together, then beat in the egg and warm water to a thick sticky batter that falls from the spoon in a slow ribbon.
- Cover and leave somewhere warm until it has doubled and domed, the surface pocked with bubbles that pop when you knock the side of the bowl.
- Heat the oil to 170C (340F); a scrap of batter should surface within three seconds and take a full minute to take colour.
- Squeeze the batter up between thumb and forefinger into a ball, scoop it off with a wet spoon straight into the oil, and fry until each one rolls over by itself and is an even deep amber all round; 5 to 6 minutes. 6 min
- Lift onto a rack rather than paper so the crust stays crisp, and eat within the hour.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Draining fried food: a rack, never paper 77 recipes
- The rack was in place before the first thing went into the oil, not fetched afterwards while food waited in a spider over the pot.
- It lands on a rack with air moving underneath it. Anything set down on paper or a flat plate traps its own steam against its base.
- Salted within seconds of landing, while it is still hot enough to take seasoning.
- A minute later the underside is still as crisp as the top: no soft flat patch where it has been sitting.
- Nothing is stacked or piled while hot, however tempting it is to keep it together. A pile steams itself soft from the inside out.
Where it goes wrong It was drained on paper, or piled up to keep warm. Steam leaving the food has nowhere to go but back into the crust, so the underside softens within a minute: the crispness the frying just bought is gone before the plate reaches the table.
Proofing: the rise before the oven 78 recipes
- Judged on volume against the container rather than on the clock: visibly grown, and grown by roughly the amount the recipe describes.
- The poke test agrees: a floured fingertip pressed a centimetre in leaves a dent that springs back slowly and only part of the way. Straight back means it is not ready; no spring at all means it has gone.
- The surface is domed, smooth, and slightly sheened: not cratered, wrinkled, or collapsed, and not skinned over and dry from proofing uncovered.
- Handled, it feels alive and airy: light for its size, with bubbles visible under the skin.
- It springs in the oven: the piece lifts in the first minutes and the scores open. A shape that does not move at all was proofed past its point before it went in.
Where it goes wrong It was proofed to the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed: overproofed, it collapses as the blade touches it and bakes flat and dense with a sour edge; underproofed, it tears at the side and bakes tight.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauternes
- Also Right
- Demi-sec Champagne
- From the Taps
- Belgian tripel
- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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