Gluten-free Dutch Doughnuts (oliebollen)
For me, there is no New Years Eve without Oliebollen. Oliebollen are Dutch doughnuts. Literally translated they are called ‘oil balls’.
A pretty accurate name if you ask me because they are dough balls fried in oil. My mum has been making these Dutch doughnuts on the 31st of December for as long as I can remember.
Every year we made about 100 doughnuts (insane, I know!) and we used to eat them all within 2-3 days (even more insane, I know!). Dutch doughnuts are just so good!
The past two years were the first years that I ate low FODMAP with New Year and last year my mum and I tried to make gluten-free Dutch doughnuts for the first time.
Unfortunately, they were a total fail. They looked like fried pancakes instead of doughnuts and they didn’t taste good at all. That was my first New Years Eve without oliebollen 🙁
It didn’t want to let that happen again this year. Therefore I started testing gluten-free Dutch doughnuts in mid-December already. I found out what went wrong last year.
Last year I used gluten-free flour that is usually used for cakes to make the oliebollen. This gluten-free flour has a very fine structure and it seemed to evaporate in the batter (it mainly consists of starch).
This year I used gluten-free flour that is meant to bake bread with. This mix contained rice flour and buckwheat flour next to potato and corn flour.
This time the batter was exactly as it should be. Airy, but not liquid. The oliebollen turned out perfectly. I really couldn’t taste the difference between the ones I with gluten that I used to eat and these.
How to make gluten-free Dutch doughnuts
As I have said above, it is important to use a gluten-free flour mix for bread, not one that is used for cakes or cookies.
My favourite bread mix that I always used unfortunately got discontinued, so I tested the recipe with a few other mixes:
Doves Farm gluten-free brown bread mix
The batter for the Dutch doughnuts looked well with this mix, I just didn’t like the end result. They were not so fluffy (a bit heavy) and the taste was not good. So I don’t advise using this flour mix in my recipe.
Schär Mix B Brot
The gluten-free bread mix from Schär worked better. With this mix the Dutch dougnuts are not too heavy and fluffy. They just stay a bit lighter coloured because of the colour of the bread mix.
Note that this mix contains a little bit of lentil flour. Lentils are only limited low FODMAP, so I expect lentil flour is limited low FODMAP as well. It is good to test beforehand how you react to this flour mix.
Homemade flour mix
I also made a homemade flour mix that resembled my favourite bread mix that got discontinued. For this I used the following:
- 100 g brown rice flour
- 50 g teff flour
- 20 g corn starch
- 70 g tapioca starch
- 1 tsp (4 g) xanthan gum
- 7 g baking powder
This was my favourite batter for the Dutch doughnuts. They became soft, fluffy and still tasted good the next day.
Storing gluten-free Dutch dougnuts
A disadvantage of gluten-free bakes is that they get dry very quickly. I know that normal oliebollen also get dry and harder after a day or two, but with gluten-free oliebollen this is even quicker. Therefore I advise to eat them on the same day as you make them. Or if you want to store them for a day or two, you can heat them in the microwave shortly before eating them. Then they will get soft again.
Oliebollen with or without raisins
We make our oliebollen or dougnhuts in two types: plain ones or dougnuts with raisins in them (we call them rozijnenbollen).
I love my oliebollen with raisins in them, so I always add 50 g of raisins to this recipe. If you rather have plain dougnuts, you can leave them out.
Raisins are low FODMAP up to 13 g per portion. If you stick to the amounts in this recipe, a portion of two oliebollen will be a safe serving.
Fat and IBS
Fat is an IBS-trigger. This means that large amounts of fat can trigger complaints in people with IBS (even if a recipe is low FODMAP).
For this reason, I advise not eating more than 1 or 2 doughnuts at a time. Make sure you drain some oil from the oliebollen before eating them.
You do this by putting them on a sheet of kitchen paper when they come out of the oil.
Will you let me know if you make my gluten-free Dutch doughnuts? I would love it if you would share your creations with me using the hashtag #karlijnskitchen on Instagram or by tagging me at @karlijnskitchen
Gluten-free Dutch Doughnuts (low FODMAP, lactose-free)
- Servings: 10 1x
Description
Delicious low FODMAP and gluten-free Dutch doughnuts. Just as good as the original variant with gluten. New Years Eve as it should be! Also lactose-free.
Ingredients
- 250 g gluten-free flour*
- 220 ml warm lactose-free milk**
- 180 ml warm water
- 25 g sugar
- 7 g dried yeast
- A pinch of salt
- Optional: 50 g raisins
- 2 litres sunflower oil
- Powdered sugar
- Kitchen thermometer
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 50 degrees Celcius (this is for rising the batter).
- Heat the milk in a pan or in the microwave.
- Put the flour, sugar, salt and yeast together in a bowl. Stir.
- Pour in the water and the milk. Mix together with a mixer or whisk.
- Put the bowl into the oven for 30 minutes to rise. After half an hour it usually has risen quite a lot. Otherwise you can leave the batter in the warm oven for a little longer. If there is a hard layer on top of the batter after the rising, you can remove this with a spoon.
- Put the raisins into warm water for about 15 minutes. Drain and dry them well after that.
- Heat the sunflower oil in a heatproof pan to 175 degrees Celsius (347 F). Be very careful because the oil will get extremely hot.
- Carefully fold the raisins into the batter.
- Take an ice cream spoon or two spoons and drop balls of dough into the oil carefully. Fry the oliebollen for about 4-6 minutes until they have browned on all sides. Note that the doughnuts will become quite darker if you use the homemade flour mix, this is because the flours you use are a bit darker. If you take the first doughnut out of the oil, cut it open to see if it is fully cooked. If it is not, you can fry the next doughnut a bit longer.
- Take them out with a heatproof spatula and leave them to drain well.
- Serve the oliebollen with powdered sugar.
Notes
*See the text above the recipe for the flour mixes that I like to use for this recipe.
**Use plant-based milk to make the doughnuts vegan.
Together we go for a calm belly!
Subscribe to the Karlijn's Kitchen e-mail newsletter for more tips and recipes and receive the ebook 10 things I wish I had known when I started the FODMAP diet for free!
13 Comments
How are these lactose free when they have milk?
That’s a mistake, thank you for noticing. It should say lactose-free milk. I will change it 🙂
Well, that was tricky to make GF olieballen!
I see what you mean about pancakes!
In the end I managed to make about 6 very funny shapes but they’ll do! I had to hold them together with spoons to keep their shape. The sultanas perhaps weighed them down too much.
In Australia I could not find those combos of GF bread flour and subsititued 50 gms of buckwheat…
Not sure I’ll try again but the smell and taste was good.
Have you made GF apelflappen?
Hi Leni, yes the right flour mixture is quite difficult to find for oliebollen. I didn’t try to make appelflappen because unfortunately I am intolerant to apples. But making them should be quite simple, by using gluten-free puff pastry.
what kind of gluten free flour do u use?
thanks!
Shira (themustanggirl)
hi
what kind of glutenfree flour do you use?
thanks
Shira
I use gluten-free flour for bread
yes i know but what is in that flour?
could i perhaps use pamelas bread flour mix? it containes: sorghum flour, tapioca starch, white rice flour, sweet rice flour, brown rice flour, inulin, sugar, millet flour, sea salt and xanthan gum.
Can you tell me how I can make this without the gf pre mixed flour, I make my own gf flour mixes.
I made this recipe in Australia a few days ago, and they were amazing! Thanks so much for sharing the combination of flours in addition to the pre-made mixes that you had tried. I used the home-made flour blend and they tasted so good! Even the next day they were still quite soft and delicious when quickly reheated in the microwave. My non-coeliac husband liked them too!
So happy to hear that 🙂
Hi Karlijn. I used the base of your oliebollen recipe. But instead of the gf flour, I used a packet of Simply Wize Gluten Free Crusty Bread Mix. Packet was 330g so I increased the other ingredients accordingly:
285ml lactose free milk
235ml water
32g sugar
Yeast sachet in bread mix packet.
Fluked it … they were a huge success!!! Have frozen a few, will let you know how they go.
Thank you x
Happy to hear that! 🙂