Home » Latest » TRENDING NOW » Brad and Claire Make Doughnuts Part 3: Redemption | It’s Alive | Bon Appétit

Brad and Claire Make Doughnuts Part 3: Redemption | It’s Alive | Bon Appétit

4

InfoSearched 58 0 TRENDING NOW

8.8

SaveSavedRemoved 4

Three episodes deep into their sourdough doughnut saga, Bon Appétit’s Brad Leone and Claire Saffitz finally stick the landing.

“Brad and Claire Make Doughnuts Part 3: Redemption” closes out one of “It’s Alive with Brad”‘s longest-running arcs, picking up where “Part 2: The Disaster” left off with a batch of sourdoughnuts nobody wanted to eat. Filmed inside the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen at One World Trade Center and cut in the show’s signature chaotic style by editor Matt Hunziker, this installment sends Leone and Saffitz back to the fryer to fix everything that went wrong the first two times around.

• The episode is the third and concluding chapter of the “Brad and Claire Make Doughnuts” arc, following the failed dough, proofing, and frying attempt documented in “Part 2: The Disaster.”
• Brad Leone leans on his sourdough fermentation background to fix the leavened dough, while pastry chef Claire Saffitz applies precision timing and temperature control to correct the textural problems from the previous batch.
• Their previous fillings — Saffitz’s runny ganache and Leone’s overly thick raspberry jam — get reworked, and the team swaps their old powdered sugar coating for a vanilla bean glaze.

Fixing the Dough First

Every doughnut disaster starts with the dough, and that’s exactly where Leone and Saffitz begin their fix. Leone, whose grasp of sourdough fermentation has carried much of “It’s Alive”‘s bread-focused content, takes the lead on kneading and proofing, walking Saffitz through the adjustments needed to get a leavened dough that will actually hold up in hot oil. Saffitz, trained as a pastry chef, brings the kind of attention to timing and texture that a home fryer without a thermometer tends to skip — the exact detail that sank their second attempt.

The teasing that opens the episode, with Leone ribbing Saffitz over her doughnut filling from the prior installment, sets the tone: two chefs with very different instincts, one improvisational and one meticulous, working the same problem from opposite directions. That contrast has defined the “It’s Alive” format since it launched, and it’s the engine that eventually gets this batch of dough proofed correctly.

The Fry That Got It Right

Frying was the breaking point in “Part 2,” where the doughnuts came out either raw in the middle or scorched on the outside. This time, Leone’s kitchen instincts and Saffitz’s insistence on precise timing combine to land the fry at an even golden brown — the visual cue that tells them, before they’ve even cut one open, that the troubleshooting worked.

Fillings and the Vanilla Bean Glaze

With the base finally right, the pair moves to the part of the recipe that got them into trouble the last time: fillings and finish. In “Part 2,” Saffitz’s ganache ran too thin and Leone’s raspberry jam set up too thick to pipe cleanly. For the redemption round, they come in with reworked versions of both, and the payoff is immediate — the ganache holds, the jam pipes evenly, and the fillings finally match the doughnuts they’re going inside.

The glaze gets an overhaul too. Instead of the powdered sugar coating from their earlier attempts, Leone and Saffitz finish this batch with a vanilla bean glaze, chasing a shinier, smoother shell than powdered sugar can deliver.

Golden-brown dough, a ganache that finally sets, and a vanilla bean glaze standing in for the powdered sugar that didn’t work the first two times — that’s the whole redemption arc in one bite.

Two Cooks, One Payoff

The finished product — fried, filled, and glazed doughnuts that actually look like what Leone and Saffitz set out to make three episodes ago — is less about any single technique fix and more about the two of them finally syncing up. Leone’s feel for fermentation and Saffitz’s demand for precision spent two prior episodes pulling against each other; here, they’re pulling the same direction, and the doughnuts show it.

“It’s Alive” has built its audience on exactly this kind of multi-part, work-it-out-on-camera format, the same structural trick that’s carried plenty of other long-running web series, from viral stunt content like World’s Longest T-Shirt Launch | OT 33 to marathon challenge videos such as 100 Hours In Minecraft Hardcore: Episode 1. For Leone and Saffitz, three parts and one genuine disaster later, the sourdoughnut saga finally ends with a doughnut worth eating — and a fanbase already asking what dish gets the multi-part treatment next.