Fillings made from fruits such as cherries, pineapple, and prunes, almond paste, cream fillings, or sugar and spice mixtures may be used to fill coffee cakes, sweet dough, and Danish pastry. Most everyone prefers a coating or finish of one type or another on sweet rolls, coffee cakes, doughnuts, and other pastries. An endless combination of ingredients can be used for this purpose. The following are the most commonly used combinations:

Dry coatings such as cinnamon-sugar filling, powdered sugar, or granulated sugar

Glazes such as vanilla or butterscotch for doughnuts and syrup or syrup-fruit glazes for sweet rolls and coffee cakes

Washes for breads, rolls, and coffee cakes Toppings

Dry Coatings

The dry coatings are used most often on cake doughnuts. Using dry sugar coatings is somewhat more complicated than merely shaking together a properly cooled fried cake doughnut and sugar in a paper bag.

Sugar coating will shed off rapidly from an overcooked, dry doughnut. On the other hand, a sugared doughnut appearing moist on the surface may be an undercooked doughnut. If the sugar melts or disappears, the doughnut is too moist. This condition is known in the baking industry as sweating. Follow the AFRS for preparing cake doughnuts. Cake doughnuts should be cooled before being sugared.

Glazes

A vanilla glaze is usually applied to yeast-raised doughnuts, but cake doughnuts also may be glazed. Other glazes incorporating imitation maple, rum, brandy, cherry, almond, and black walnut flavoring may be used.

Doughnut glazing is somewhat more complicated than the sugaring process because the glaze is much less stable, particularly at warm temperatures.  Glazes should be sufficiently thin to flow and to allow the excess to roll off.

Yeast doughnuts should not be less than 160F when glaze is applied. Taken from 375F deep fat, a doughnut will cool to the proper temperature in about 1 to 2 minutes. Doughnuts should be submerged into the glaze and drained on a wire screen until the glaze is set. Air circulation around the entire doughnut is important in setting the glaze.

Syrup glazes are usually applied to rolls or coffee cakes. A syrup glaze is prepared from a mixture of blended syrup and water that is boiled for 5 minutes. For variation, a fruit juice or pureed fruit, sugar, and syrup mixture can be prepared. Brush syrup glazes over hot baked coffee cakes and sweet rolls.

Washes

Washes are applied to sweet doughs before baking and are used in addition to glazes or toppings in many products. They are used also on pastry, some quick breads, yeast bread (rolls and buns), and bar cookies.

Washes serve two functions: (1) to wash off excess flour and facilitate browning and (2) to provide a surface to help added toppings such as nuts, fruits, poppy or sesame seeds, or onions stick to the products. Any one of the following ingredients maybe used individual y or in combination: butter, cornstarch, whole eggs, and egg whites.

Toppings

Toppings such as glazed nut, orange coconut, raisin, streusel, pecan, or praline toppings are added to sweet rolls or coffee cakes before baking.

PIZZA

Almost any lean dough formula, such as that for French bread, can be used for making pizza. The major difference between a particular formula for pizza and lean bread doughs is that the yeast is not fed. That is, sugar is not an ingredient in a pizza formula because it is not needed to supply the yeast energy. Volume is not a factor in pizza doughs. Fermentation for pizza is relatively short in comparison with other bread doughs and makeup consists only of flattening the dough to the required dimensions.

Partially baked pizza crusts are prepared commercially and frozen. Add galley-prepared pizza sauce and bake according to package directions.