The photo of the doughnut looks just like the one I had today at the Addison Athletic Club. Periodically, there is a coffee and doughnuts social for seniors there. The doughnut was delicious, and the company was delightful. I didn’t have any coffee though since I am not a coffee drinker. I am not partial to yeast or cake doughnuts. I find them both delicious. In fact, I don’t think I have ever had a bad doughnut. The yeast ones are pillowy soft, and the cake ones are a mouthful of flavor. Add the smooth, sugary icing and sweet sprinkles, and you’ve got the pinnacle of pastry. Plus, there are so many different kinds. I have had caramel, chocolate, lemon and vanilla icing, along with fillings in the same flavors plus strawberry and grape jelly. In addition, I have had a cake doughnut with blueberries in the dough — a sweeter blueberry pancake in cake form. Variations on the doughnut include bear claws with almonds to look like toenails, crullers that look like braided pastry and doughnut holes. I have never tasted a doughnut I didn’t like. Let’s learn more about them.
A doughnut or donut is a type of leavened fried dough. It is popular in many countries and is prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls and franchised specialty vendors. Doughnut is the traditional spelling, while donut is the simplified version; the terms are often used interchangeably.
Doughnuts are usually deep fried from a flour dough, but other types of batters can also be used. Various toppings and flavorings are used for different types, such as sugar, chocolate or maple glazing. Doughnuts may also include water, leavening, eggs, milk, sugar, oil, shortening and natural or artificial flavors.
The two most common types are the ring doughnut and the filled doughnut, which is injected with fruit preserves — the jelly doughnut, cream, custard or other sweet fillings. Small pieces of dough are sometimes cooked as doughnut holes. Once fried, doughnuts may be glazed with a sugar icing, spread with icing or chocolate or topped with powdered sugar, cinnamon, sprinkles or fruit. Other shapes include balls, flattened spheres, twists and other forms. Doughnut varieties are also divided into cake — including the old-fashioned — and yeast-risen type doughnuts. Doughnuts are often accompanied by coffee or milk. They are sold at doughnut shops, convenience stores, petrol/gas stations, cafes or fast-food restaurants.
Rings
Ring doughnuts are formed by one of two methods: by joining the ends of a long, skinny piece of dough into a ring, or by using a doughnut cutter, which simultaneously cuts the outside and inside shape, leaving a doughnut-shaped piece of dough and a doughnut hole — the dough removed from the center. This smaller piece of dough can be cooked and served as a "doughnut hole" or added back to the batch to make more doughnuts. A disk-shaped doughnut can also be stretched and pinched into a torus until the center breaks to form a hole. Alternatively, a doughnut depositor can be used to place a circle of liquid dough or batter directly into the fryer.
There are two types of ring doughnuts: those made from a yeast-based dough for raised doughnuts or those made from a special type of cake batter. Yeast-raised doughnuts contain about 25% oil by weight, whereas cake doughnuts' oil content is around 20%, but they have extra fat included in the batter before frying. Cake doughnuts are fried for about 90 seconds at approximately 374° to 388°F, turning once. Yeast-raised doughnuts absorb more oil because they take longer to fry — about 150 seconds — at 360° to 374°F. Cake doughnuts typically weigh between 0.85 and 0.99 oz., whereas yeast-raised doughnuts average 1.3 oz. and are generally larger and taller — due to rising — when finished.
Toppings
After frying, ring doughnuts are often topped. Raised doughnuts are generally covered with a glaze or icing. Cake doughnuts can also be glazed, powdered with confectioner's sugar or covered with cinnamon and granulated sugar. They are also often topped with cake frosting — on the top only — and sometimes sprinkled with coconut, chopped peanuts or sprinkles, also called jimmies.
Holes
Doughnut holes are small, bite-sized doughnuts that were traditionally made from the dough taken from the center of ring doughnuts. Before long, doughnut sellers saw the opportunity to market "holes" as a novelty, and many chains offer their own variety, some with their own brand names such as "Munchkins" from Dunkin' Donuts and "Timbits" from Tim Hortons.
Traditionally, doughnut holes are made by frying the dough removed from the center portion of the doughnut. Consequently, they are considerably smaller than a standard doughnut and tend to be spherical. Similar to standard doughnuts, doughnut holes may be topped with confections, such as glaze or powdered sugar.
Originally, most varieties of doughnut holes were derivatives of their ring doughnut counterparts. However, doughnut holes can also be made by dropping a small ball of dough into hot oil from a specially shaped nozzle or cutter. This production method has allowed doughnut sellers to produce bite-sized versions of non-ring doughnuts, such as filled doughnuts, fritters and Dutchies, square Canadian yeast-lifted doughnuts containing raisins, coated with a sugary glaze.
Fillings
Filled doughnuts are flattened spheres injected with fruit preserves, cream, custard or other sweet fillings, and often dipped into powdered sugar or topped off with frosting. Common varieties include the Boston cream, coconut, key lime and jelly.
Other shapes
Others include the fritter and the Dutchie, which are usually glazed. These have been available on Tim Hortons' doughnut menu since the chain's inception in 1964, and a 1991 Toronto Star report found these two were the chain's most popular type of fried dough in Canada.
There are many other specialized doughnut shapes such as old-fashioned bars or Long Johns — a rectangular shape or twists. In the northeast United States, bars and twists are usually referred to as crullers. Another is the beignet, a square-shaped doughnut covered with powdered sugar, commonly associated with New Orleans.
Origins
The cookbook ”Küchenmeisterei” or “Mastery of the Kitchen" published in Nuremberg in 1485 offers a recipe for ”Gefüllte Krapfen,” sugar-free, stuffed, fried dough cakes.
Dutch settlers brought olykoek or "oil(y) cake" to New York or New Amsterdam. These doughnuts closely resembled later ones but did not yet have their current ring shape.
A recipe for fried dough “Nuts” was published, in 1750 England, under the title "How to make Hertfordshire Cakes, Nuts and Pincushions” in “The Country Housewife’s Family Companion”by William Ellis.
A recipe labelled "dow nuts" — again from Hertfordshire — was found in a book of recipes and domestic tips written around 1800 by the wife of Baron Thomas Dimsdale, the recipe being given to the dowager Baroness by an acquaintance who transcribed for her the cooking instructions for a "dow nut."
The first cookbook using the near conventional "dough nuts" spelling was possibly the 1803 New York edition of "The Frugal Housewife: or, Complete Woman Cook," which included dough nuts in an appendix of American recipes.
One of the earliest mentions of "doughnut" was in Washington Irving's 1809 book “A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty:”
Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple-pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast of an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called dough-nuts, or oly koeks: a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, excepting in genuine Dutch families.
The name oly koeks was almost certainly related to the oliekoek: a Dutch delicacy of "sweetened cake fried in fat."
The Hole
Daniela Galarza, for Eater, wrote that "the now-standard doughnut’s hole is still up for debate. Food writer Michael Krondl surmises that the shape came from recipes that called for the dough to be shaped like a jumble — a once common ring-shaped cookie. In “Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People,” culinary historian Linda Civitello writes that the hole was invented because it allowed the doughnuts to cook faster. By 1870 doughnut cutters shaped in two concentric circles, one smaller than the other, began to appear in home-shopping catalogues."
Hanson Gregory, an American, claimed to have invented the ring-shaped doughnut in 1847 aboard a lime-trading ship when he was 16 years old. Gregory was dissatisfied with the greasiness of doughnuts twisted into various shapes and with the raw center of regular doughnuts. He claimed to have punched a hole in the center of dough with the ship's tin pepper box, and to have later taught the technique to his mother. Smithsonian Magazine states that his mother, Elizabeth Gregory, "made a wicked deep-fried dough that cleverly used her son's spice cargo of nutmeg and cinnamon, along with lemon rind," and "put hazelnuts or walnuts in the center, where the dough might not cook through" and called the food “doughnuts.”
Donut
The first known printed use of “donut” was in “Peck's Bad Boy and his Pa” by George W. Peck, published in 1900, in which a character is quoted as saying, "Pa said he guessed he hadn't got much appetite, and he would just drink a cup of coffee and eat a donut." According to John T. Edge in “Donuts, an American Passion” in 2006, the alternative spelling "donut" was invented when the New York–based Display Doughnut Machine Corp. abbreviated the word to make it more pronounceable by the foreigners they hoped would buy their automated doughnut-making equipment. The donut spelling also showed up in a Los Angeles Times article dated August 10, 1929, in which Bailey Millard jokingly complains about the decline of spelling and that he "can't swallow the 'wel-dun donut' nor the ever so 'gud bred.'"
The interchangeability of the two spellings can be found in a series of "National Donut Week" articles in The New York Times that covered the 1939 World's Fair. In four articles beginning October 9, two mention the “donut” spelling. Dunkin' Donuts, which was so-named in 1950, following its 1948 founding under the name Open Kettle in Quincy, Massachusetts, is the oldest surviving company to use the donut variation; other chains, such as the defunct Mayflower Doughnut Corp. in 1931 did not use that spelling. According to the Oxford Dictionaries while "doughnut" is used internationally, the spelling "donut" is American. The spelling "donut" remained rare until the 1950s and has since grown significantly in popularity; this growth in use has possibly been influenced by the spread of Dunkin' Donuts.
National Doughnut Day
National Doughnut Day — also known as National Donut Day — is celebrated in the United States of America on the first Friday of June each year, succeeding the Doughnut Day event created by The Salvation Army in 1938 to honor those of their members who served doughnuts to soldiers during World War I. About 250 Salvation Army volunteers went to France. Because of the difficulties of providing freshly baked goods from huts established in abandoned buildings near the front lines, two Salvation Army volunteers — Ensign Margaret Sheldon and Adjutant Helen Purviance — came up with the idea of providing doughnuts. These are reported to have been an "instant hit" and "soon many soldiers were visiting The Salvation Army huts." Margaret Sheldon wrote of one busy day: "Today I made 22 pies, 300 doughnuts, 700 cups of coffee." Soon, the women who did this work became known by the servicemen as "Doughnut Dollies."
Pink boxes
In the U..S, especially in Southern California, fresh doughnuts sold by the dozen at local doughnut shops are typically packaged in generic pink boxes. This phenomenon can be attributed to Ted Ngoy and Ning Yen — refugees of the Cambodian genocide — who transformed the local doughnut shop industry. They proved so adept at the business and in training fellow Chinese Cambodian refugees to follow suit that these local doughnut shops soon dominated native franchises such as Winchell's Donuts. Initially desiring boxes of a lucky red color rather than the standard white, Ngoy and Yen settled on a cheaper, leftover pink stock. Owing to the success of their business, the color soon became a recognizable standard. Due to the location of Hollywood, the pink boxes frequently appeared as film and television props and were thus transmitted into popular culture.
Regional variations
South Africa
In South Africa, an Afrikaans variation known as the koeksister is popular. Another variation, similar in name, is the Cape Malay koesister being soaked in a spiced syrup and coated in coconut. It has a texture similar to more traditional doughnuts as opposed to the Afrikaans variety. A further variation is the vetkoek, which is also dough deep fried in oil. It is served with mince, syrup, honey or jam.
Tunisia
In Tunisia, traditional pastries similar to doughnuts are yo-yos. They come in different versions both as balls and in the shape of doughnuts. They are deep-fried and covered in a honey syrup or a kind of frosting. Sesame seeds are also used for flavor and decoration along with orange juice and vanilla.
China
A few sweet, doughnut-style pastries are regional in nature. Cantonese cuisine features an oval-shaped pastry called ngàuhleisōu, literally "ox-tongue pastry" due to its tongue-like shape.
A spherical food called saa1 jung — which is also similar to a cream puff but denser with a doughnut-like texture and usually prepared with sugar sprinkled on top — is normally available in dim sum Cantonese restaurants. An oilier Beijing variant of this called gaoli dousha is filled with red bean paste; originally, it was made with egg white instead of dough. Many Chinese cultures make a chewy doughnut known as shuangbaotai which consists of two conjoined balls of dough.
Chinese restaurants in the United States sometimes serve small fried pastries similar to doughnut holes with condensed milk as a sauce.
Chinese cuisine features long, deep-fried doughnut sticks that are often quite oily, hence their name in Mandarin, yóutiáo or "oil strips"; in Cantonese, this doughnut-style pastry is called yàuhjagwái or "ghosts fried in oil." These pastries are lightly salted and are often served with congee, a traditional rice porridge or soy milk for breakfast.
India
In India, an old-fashioned sweet called gulgula is made of sweetened, deep-fried flour balls. A leavening agent may or may not be used.
There are a couple of unrelated doughnut-shaped food items. A savory, fried, ring-shaped snack called a vada is often referred to as the Indian doughnut. The vada is made from dal, lentil or potato flours rather than wheat flour. In North India, it is in the form of a bulging disc called dahi-vada and is soaked in curd, sprinkled with spices and sliced vegetables and topped with a sweet and sour chutney. In South India, a vada is eaten with sambar and a coconut chutney.
Sweet pastries similar to old-fashioned doughnuts called badushahi and jalebi are also popular. Balushahi — also called badushah — is made from flour, deep fried in clarified butter and dipped in sugar syrup. Unlike a doughnut, balushahi is dense. A balushahi is ring-shaped, but the well in the center does not go all the way through to form a hole typical of a doughnut. Jalebi, which is typically pretzel-shaped, is made by deep frying batter in oil and soaking it in sugar syrup. A variant of jalebi called imarti is shaped with a small ring in the center around which a geometric pattern is arranged.
Along with these Indian variants, typical varieties of doughnuts are also available from U.S. chains such as Krispy Kreme and Dunkin' Donuts retail outlets, as well as local brands such as Mad Over Donuts and the Donut Baker.
Indonesia
The Indonesian donat kentang is a potato doughnut, a ring-shaped fritter made from flour and mashed potatoes, coated in powder sugar or icing sugar.
Japan
In Japan, an-doughnut or "bean paste doughnut" is widely available at bakeries. An-doughnut is similar to Germany's Berliner, except it contains red azuki bean paste. Mister Donut is one of the most popular doughnut chains in Japan. Native to Okinawa is a spheroid pastry similar to doughnuts called sata andagi. Mochi donuts are "a cross between a traditional cake-like doughnut and chewy mochi dough similar to what’s wrapped around ice cream." This hybrid confection was originally popularized in Japan by Mister Donut before spreading to the United States via Hawaii. The Mister Donut style — also known as "pon de ring" — uses tapioca flour and produces mochi donuts that are easy to pull apart. Another variation developed in the United States uses glutinous rice flour which produces a denser mochi donut akin to Hawaiian-style butter mochi. Mochi donuts made from glutinous rice flour "typically contain half the amount of calories as the standard cake or yeast doughnut."
Philippines
Local varieties of doughnuts sold by peddlers and street vendors throughout the Philippines are usually made of plain well-kneaded dough, deep-fried in refined coconut oil and sprinkled with refined — not powdered or confectioner's — sugar. Round versions of this doughnut are known as buñuelos — also spelled bunwelos, and sometimes confusingly known as "bicho-bicho" — similar to the doughnuts in Spain and former Spanish colonies. Indigenous versions of the doughnut also exist, like the cascaron, which is prepared similarly, but uses ground glutinous rice and coconut milk in place of wheat flour and milk.
Other native doughnut recipes include the shakoy, kumukunsi and binangkal. Shakoy or siyakoy from the Visayas islands — also known as lubid-lubid in the northern Philippines — uses a length of dough twisted into a distinctive rope-like shape before being fried. The preparation is almost exactly the same as doughnuts, though there are variants made from glutinous rice flour. The texture can range from soft and fluffy to sticky and chewy to hard and crunchy — in the latter case, they are known as pilipit. They are sprinkled with white sugar, but can also be topped with sesame seeds or caramelized sugar. Kumukunsi is a jalebi-like native doughnut from the Maguindanao people. It is made with rice flour, duck eggs and sugar that is molded into rope-like strands and then fried in a loose spiral. It has the taste and consistency of a creamy pancake. Binangkal are simple fried dough balls covered in sesame seeds. Other fried dough desserts include the mesh-like lokot-lokot, the fried rice cake panyalam, and the banana fritter maruya, among others.
Israel
Jelly doughnuts, known as sufganiyah in Israel, have become a traditional Hanukkah food in the recent era, as they are cooked in oil, associated with the holiday account of the miracle of the oil. Traditional sufganiyot are filled with red jelly and topped with icing sugar. However, many other varieties exist, with some being filled with dulce de leche, particularly common after the South American aliyah early in the 21st century.
Czech Republic
U.S.-style doughnuts are available in the Czech Republic, but before they were a solid shape and filled with jelly — strawberry or peach. The shape is similar to doughnuts in Germany or Poland. They are called kobliha or koblihy in plural. They may be filled with nougat or with vanilla custard. There are now many fillings; cut in half or non-filled knots with sugar and cinnamon on top.
Finland
In Finland, a sweet doughnut is called a munkki — the word also means monk — and are commonly eaten in cafés and cafeteria restaurants. It is sold cold and sometimes filled with jam like U.S. jelly donuts or a vanilla sauce. A ring doughnut is also known as donitsi.
A savory form of doughnut is the lihapiirakka, literally meat pie. Made from a doughnut mixture and deep fried, the end product is more akin to a savory doughnut than any pie known in the English- speaking world.
Germany
In parts of Germany, the doughnut equivalents are called Berliner, but not in the capital city of Berlin itself and neighboring areas, where they are called Pfannkuchen — which is often found misleading by people in the rest of Germany, who use the word Pfannkuchen to describe a pancake, which is also the literal translation of it. Both Berliner and Pfannkuchen are abbreviations of the term Berliner Pfannkuchen, however.
In middle Germany, doughnuts are called Kreppel or Pfannkuchen. In southern Germany, they are also called Krapfen and are especially popular during Carnival season in southern and middle Germany and on New Year's Eve in northern Germany. A Berliner does not have the typical ring shape of a doughnut, but instead is solid and usually filled with jam, while a ring-shaped variant called Kameruner is common in Berlin and eastern Germany. Bismarcks and Berlin doughnuts are also found in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland and the United States. Today, U.S.-style doughnuts are also available in Germany, but are less popular than their native counterparts.
Netherlands
In the Netherlands, oliebollen, referred to in cookbooks as "Dutch doughnuts," are a type of fritter, with or without raisins or currants and usually sprinkled with powdered sugar. Variations of the recipe contain slices of apple or other fruits. They are traditionally eaten as part of New Year celebrations.
Poland
In Poland and parts of the U.S. with a large Polish community — like Chicago and Detroit — the round, jam-filled doughnuts eaten especially — though not exclusively — during the Carnival are called pączki. They have been known in Poland at least since the Middle Ages. Jędrzej Kitowicz has described that during the reign of Augustus III under the influence of French cooks who came to Poland at that time, pączki dough fried in Poland has been improved, so that pączki became lighter, spongier and more resilient.
Spain
In Spain, there are two different types of doughnuts. The first one — simply called donuts or more traditionally berlinesas — is a U.S.-style doughnut, i.e., a deep-fried, sweet, soft, ring of flour dough.
The second type of doughnut is a traditional pastry called rosquilla or rosquete — the latter name is typical in the Canary Islands — made of fermented dough and fried or baked in an oven. Rosquillas were purportedly introduced in Spain by the Romans. In Spain, there are several variants of them depending on the region where they are prepared and the time of the year they are sold. In some regions they are considered a special pastry prepared only for Easter. Although overall they are more tightly textured and less sweet than U.S.-style doughnuts, they differ greatly in shape, size and taste from one region to another.
The churro is a sweet pastry of deep-fried dough similar to a doughnut but shaped as a long, thin, ribbed cylinder rather than a ring or sphere. Churros are commonly served dusted in sugar as a snack or with a cup of hot chocolate.
Ukraine
In Ukraine doughnuts are called pampushky. They are made of yeast dough containing wheat, rye or buckwheat flour. Traditionally they are baked but may also be fried. According to William Pokhlyobkin, the technology of making pampushky points to German cuisine, and these buns were possibly created by German colonists in Ukraine.
Australia
In Australia, the doughnut is a popular snack food. Jam doughnuts are particularly popular, especially in Melbourne, Victoria and the Queen Victoria Market, where they are a tradition. Jam doughnuts are similar to a Berliner, but are served hot: red jam — raspberry or strawberry — is injected into the bun before it is deep-fried, and then it is coated with either sugar or sugar mixed with cinnamon as soon as it has been cooked. Jam doughnuts are sometimes also bought frozen. In South Australia, they are known as Berliner or Kitchener and often served in cafes. Popular variants include custard-filled doughnuts, and more recently, Nutella-filled doughnuts.
Mobile vans that serve doughnuts, traditional or jam, are often seen at spectator events, markets, carnivals and fetes, and by the roadside near high-traffic areas like airports and the car parks of large shopping centers. Traditional cinnamon doughnuts are readily available in Australia from specialized retailers and convenience stores. Doughnuts are a popular choice for schools and other not-for-profit groups to cook and sell as a fundraiser.
Donut King is Australia's largest retailer of doughnuts. A Guinness Book of Records largest doughnut made up of 90,000 individual doughnuts was set in Sydney in 2007 as part of a celebration for the release of “The Simpsons Movie.”
Brazil
In Brazil, bakeries, grocery stores and pastry shops sell ball-shaped doughnuts popularly known as "sonhos," literally “dreams.” The dessert was brought to Brazil by Portuguese colonizers that had contact with Dutch and German traders. They are the equivalent of nowadays "bolas de Berlim" — literally “balls of Berlin” — in Portugal, but the traditional Portuguese yellow cream was substituted by local dairy and fruit products. They are made of a special type of bread filled with "goiabada" or guava jelly or milk cream and covered by white sugar.
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