DONUTS—Magazine Article

Is There Anything They Can’t Do?

Call them doughnuts, donut, sufganiyot, paczi, or all of the above—we’re uncovering the history of this beloved pastry.

BY DEVIN HEALY

DONUTS ARE ONE OF THE MOST popular foods of all time. They are sweet, delicious and you can eat them on the go. Donuts have been around for hundreds of years, however, their true origin & invention is debated as fried dough is not exclusive to a single culture. The exact place where the first donuts were made is unknown and nobody knows who made them. However, there are certain events in history, which give us some idea of where donuts were first invented.

They have become somewhat of a poster child for sweet indulgence thanks to influential characters, animated cartoons, and America’s love for sweet little treats before 11 am. From its (very) humble beginnings, donuts, or should we say donuts, have climbed up the culinary ladder towards global domination. Now, While it’s difficult to imagine a world without trendy maple bacon and matcha iced donuts, this tasty treat hasn’t been around forever, nor has it always had flavor.

At a Smithsonian dedication, a singer, Cindy Hutchins, stepped up to the mike and drawing on the museum’s archive of popular sheet music (more than a million songs in all) sang, “Who made the donut with the hole in the middle? Just how it got there will always be a riddle.” Well, yes and no. It is true that the humble donut does have a convoluted past that involves Dutch immigrants, Russian exiles, French bakers, Irving Berlin, Clark Gable and a certain number of Native Americans. And, yes, in its democratic ethos, its optimism, and its assorted origins, iit does seem rather quintes sentially American. (Smithsonian)

Be sweet and honest always, but for God’s sake don’t eat my doughnuts!

Each year we celebrate National Donut Day, a holiday erected in 1938 to honor the Salvation Army’s “Donut Lassies.” Today, the donut holiday means free donuts (and other sweet perks) from many local shops. While it can be hard to imagine a world without ma ple bacon bars and apple pie cheddar donuts, this tasty treat hasn’t been around forever. That’s why we’ve compiled a seriously sweet history of donuts that is will surely send you scrambling to Krispy Kreme before the day is over. (All That’s Interesting)

DUTCH OLYKOEKS. Donuts have become the poster child of everyday indulgence thanks to a melting pot of influential char acters, historical happen stance, and sweet tooths —and many, many pans filled with hot oil. Dutch settlers introduced donuts to the U.S. when they ended up in Manhattan, then known as New Amsterdam. They called these donut predecessors “olykoeks,” or oily cakes, which were fried in pork fat. Formed by dropping dough off the end of a spoon, their name evolved to “oliebollen,” or oily balls, thanks to their irregular round shape. Unlike today, oliebollen were traditionally enjoyed during the Christmas season, and each cook had his or her own, individualized recipe. (food52.com)

Of course donuts in some form or other have been around so long that archaeolo gists keep turning up fossilized bits of what look like donuts in the middens of prehistoric Native American settlements. But the donut proper (if that’s the right word) supposedly came to Manhattan (then still New Am

sterdam) under the un appetizing Dutch name of olykoeks--”oily cakes.” (Smithsonian)

Records show that in the mid-19th century, the Dutch began making a treat known as olykoeks (oil cakes). These donuts were balls of cake, which were cooked in pork fat until they were golden brown. The problem with these treats was that the cake cooked much faster on the outside than on the inside, leaving an uncooked center when the outside was done. To rectify this prob lem, cooks were stuffing the treats with nuts, fruit, or other fillings that did not need to be cooked. When Dutch immigrants began to settle in the North American area, they continued to make olykoeks. As more immi grants from other cultures also began mak ing olykoeks, they crafted their own varia tions. Eventually, olykoeks evolved to become what we know today as donuts. (Shipley)

THE GREGORYS. Fast-forward to the mid19th century and Elizabeth Gregory, a New England ship captain’s mother who made a wicked deep-fried dough that cleverly used her son’s spice cargo of nutmeg and cinna mon, along with lemon rind. Some say she made it so son Hanson and his crew could store a pastry on long voyages, one that might help ward off scurvy and colds. In any case, Mrs. Gregory put hazelnuts or walnuts in the center, where the dough might not cook through, and in a literal-minded way called them donuts. Her son always claimed

The only circle of trust you should have is a donut.

credit for something less than that: putting the hole in the donut. Some cynical donut historians maintain that Captain Gregory did it to stint on ingredients, others that he thought the hole might make the whole easi er to digest. Still others say that he gave the donut its shape when, needing to keep both hands on the wheel in a storm, he skewered one of his mom’s donuts on a spoke of his ship’s wheel. In an interview with the Boston Post at the turn of the century, Captain Gregory tried to quell such rumors with his recollection of the moment 50 years before: using the top of a round tin pepper box, he said, he cut into the middle of a donut “the first donut hole ever seen by mortal eyes.”

(Smithsonian)

To solve the problem of the uncooked center of donuts, many believed that stuffing the middle would be good enough. In 1847, an American ship captain named Hansen Gregory, came up with a better solution. Rather than with dealing of the gooey, uncooked center, he chose to punch a hole through the center of the dough, eliminating the uncooked center altogether. There are a few other versions of how the hole ended up in donuts. Some people say that Captain Gregory wanted to steer with both hands while enjoying his tasty treat, so he impaled his donuts on the ship’s steering wheel, creating a hole in the middle. Others say that the idea of the hole in the middle of donuts came to him in a dream sent by angels. Whatever the real story is, Captain Gregory is credited for inventing the traditional ring shape for donuts.

WWII. Oddly enough, the history of donuts is intimately tied to war. Donuts didn’t come into their own until World War I, when millions of homesick American doughboys had met millions of donuts in the trenches of France. They were served up by women volunteers who even brought them to the front lines to give soldiers a tasty touch of home. When the doughboys came back from the war they had a natural yen for more donuts. (The name “doughboy,” though, didn’t derive from donuts. It all goes back to the relatively donutless Civil War, when the troop derided the foot soldiers as doughboys, perhaps because of their globular brassed buttons resembled flour dumplings, or because soldiers used flour to polish their white belts. Donuts took on a patriotic resonance on the front lines of WWI, when female Salvation Army workers who were known as “Donut Girls” would fry and distribute donuts to the American soldiers fighting in France. They offered a taste of home to the soldiers, who became known as “Doughboys.” Do nut Girls were replaced by “Donut Dollies” during World War II. (Tori Avey)

MACHINE. The first donut machine did not come along until 1920, in New York City, when Adolph Levitt, an enterprising refu gee from czarist Russia, began selling fried donuts from his bakery. Hungry theater crowds pushed him to make a gadget that

churned out the tasty rings faster, and he did. Levitt’s donut machine was the first sign that the donut, till then merely a taste sen sation, could, in production, become a public spectacle. And so generations of kids like me, and adults, too, have stood transfixed by the Willy Wonka-like scene behind the glass of donut shops, learning in the process that the donut hole is built in, not cut out. There before them a circle of dough, shaped like a perfect smoke ring, and about the diameter of a baseball, dropped off into a vat of boiling oil, circulated, got turned over to brown on

sprinkle for your thoughts?

BY THE LATE 1950S, in twenty nine Krispy Kreme store-factories in twelve states, Ring Kings, like the Smithsonian’s model, were turning out something like 75 dozen doughnuts an hour. They faced stiff competition. Dunkin’ Donuts started in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1950, and has been flourishing ever since.

By the 1980s, the Ring King Jr. was obsolete; a fond memory for donut aficio nados, it was then replaced by newer and more elaborate equipment. Sadly,, the donut itself seemed to be going into decline, especially in New York where it was being challenged especially by the more urbane bagel.

RANKED!

hardly comes as a surprise that Americans are among the most opinionated when it comes to their donut preferences, and thousands of Americans voted in Ranker’s 2015 poll to uncover the best donuts across America. From classic glazed to Boston creme, we’ve compiled the data and created a list of America’s favorite donuts.

As you ramble on through life, whatever be your goal, keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.

Caption TBD

the other side, and emerged from the oil on a moving ramp, one by one like ducks in a row. The machines grew more refined. The idea spread. By 1931, the New Yorker was whispering to its readers, “We can tell you a little about the donut-making place in Broadway,” and described how “donuts float dreamily through a grease canal in a glass enclosed machine, walk dreamily up a moving ramp, and tumble dreamily into an outgoing basket.” By then, Adolph Levitt’s machines were earning him a dreamy $25 million a year, mostly from wholesale deliveries to bakers around the country. A company spokesman breathlessly reported that Levitt’s machine had pulled the donut “out of the mire of prejudice that surrounded the heavy, grease-soaked product . . . and made it into a light, puffy product of a ma chine.” (Smithsonian)

JEWISH CULTURE / ADOLPH LEVITT.

Of course, those of us who celebrate Ha nukkah know that the donut also has a rich history in Jewish cuisine. Deep-fried dough balls known as sufganiyot are prepared today much as there were more than a thousand years ago. They’re most often served on holidays and festive occasions like Hanukkah, where deep-fried foods are symbolically prepared to remind us of the miracle of the Hanukkah oil.American donut culture was heavily influenced by the Jews, in some rather unexpected ways! A Jewish refugee from czarist Russian named Adolph Levitt is responsible for inventing the first automated donut machine in 1920. Thanks to Levitt, machine-produced donuts were labeled the “Hit Food of the Century of Progress” at the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair. (Tori Avey)

REPUTATION. By the 1934 World’s Fair in Chicago, donuts were poster material, billed as “the food hit of the Century of Progress.” Seeing them produced “automatically” somehow made them part of the wave of the future. A donut cost less than a nickel, within reach of most of the Depression’s victims. They were base and beloved. (Smithsonian)

Since invention, donuts have become in credibly popular. There are a few huge chains which produce millions of donuts daily. There are also smaller, specialty shops which make gourmet donuts. Even the purpose of do nuts has changed. People are making bacon donuts, creating a donut for those without a sweet tooth. Others have made ice cream sandwiches using donuts, and some people even put their hamburgers on donuts rather than buns. While the true origin of donuts may never be known, their enduring popular ity is well established. (Shipley Donuts)

Donuts make life a little bit sweeter.

ORIGINS OF THE NAME. The origin of the name of donuts is also debated. Some people believe that the word donut refers to the nuts that were placed in the middle of the dough to correct the problem of the uncooked centers. Others believe that it refers to dough knots, which was a popular shape for olykoeks. In 1809, with Washing ton Irving’s publication of A History of New York, the word “donut” appeared in print for the first time. By early 1900s, the word was shortened to “donut.” Today, either spelling is acceptable. (Shipley Donuts)

GIL MARKS & THE ORIGIN OF DUNKIN DONUTS. “William Rosenberg (1916-2002), the son of immigrant Jewish parents, was operating an industrial catering business in which he sold snacks in converted second hand trucks near factories around his native Dorchester, Massachusetts. He noticed that donuts and coffee accounted for 40 percent of his sales, and in 1948 launched a donut shop called the Open Kettle in Quin cy, Massachusetts, the heart of America’s original donut country, aiming for a blue collar clientele…“This unassuming store would eventually become, in Rosenberg’s words, ‘the world’s largest coffee and baked goods chain.’ Two years after opening, Rosenberg changed the store’s name to Dunkin’ Donuts and five years after that, arranged the first franchise in nearby Worcester… By 1963, there were 100 Dunkin’ Donuts shops, and by 1979, there were 1,000.” “By the time of Rosenberg’s death, there were more than 5,000 Dunkin’ Donuts shops, including about 40 outlets under kosher supervision, in nearly 40 countries, and serving nearly 2 million customers per day.” (Tori Avey)

FACTS & FIGURES. By the late 1950s, in 29 Krispy Kreme stores in 12 states, individual Ring Kings like the Smithsonian’s model were turning out something like 75 dozen donuts an hour. They faced stiff competition. Dunkin’ Donuts, started in Massachusetts in 1950, has been flourishing ever since. By the early 1980s, the Ring King Jr. was obsolete; a fond memory for donut aficionados, it was replaced by newer and more elaborate equipment. Sadly, for a while there, the do nut itself seemed to be going into decline, especially in New York where it was being challenged by the more urbane bagel. These days the redoubtable donut, made by Krispy Kreme and others, is riding high. Krispy Kreme stores, long best known in the South, are spreading North and West, and sales climbed 20 percent in 1997. Last February, the New Yorker described the Manhattan store as a “shrine” and once more detailed the donut-making process. (The new machines make 800 dozen donuts an hour--more than ten times as many as the Ring King Jr.--but still use the secret formula and donut mixes shipped from Winston-Sa lem.) Dunkin’ Donuts has stores in twice as many states as Krispy Kreme, and in 37 other countries, and sells nearly five times as many donuts worldwide. In the U.S. alone, about 10 billion donuts are made every year, a mere 1.1 billion by Krispy Kreme.

Donut consumption figures do not encour age nutritionists, who like to point out that

the average donut can carry a 300-calorie wallop, notable mainly for its sugar and fat. In fact, a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine bemoaned the unsat urated fat purveyed by the glazed donut. Famous chefs generally deplore the donut. But neither science nor culinary scorn nor outright scolding deters devotees, who var iously describe Krispy Kreme’s hot “original glazed” donut with terms like “angelic” or even “sugar-coated air.”

Today, donut shops have taken over our street corners. From Dunkin’ Donuts to Krispy Kreme, from cake to glazed, donuts are intimately intertwined with American culture. While you can still easily find cheap, readily-available (though not always high quality) donuts, they have begun to creep into the category of “gourmet.” Where once they turned to éclairs and petits-fours, artisinal pastry shops are looking to the donut as their next canvas for culinary innovation (cough, cronut). However, though they may be the retro darling of hip bakeries, donuts will always be there for the everyman—as long as we have oil, yeast, and sprinkles.