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A doughnut or donut (/ˈdoʊnət/) is a type of pastry made from leavened fried dough.[1][2]: 275 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 used interchangeably.
Doughnuts are usually deep fried from a flour dough, but other types of batters can also be used. Various toppings and flavors 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 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.
A recipe for a deep-fried dough ball was recorded by Cato the Elder in his de agri cultura, using cheese, honey, and poppy seeds, called globi.[3] Similar types of fried dough recipes have either spread to, or originated, in other parts of Europe and the World.[4]
The cookbook Küchenmeisterei (Mastery of the Kitchen), published in Nuremberg in 1485, offers a recipe for "Gefüllte Krapfen", stuffed, fried dough cakes.[5]
The Spanish and Portuguese churro is a choux pastry dough that would also be served in a ring-shape. The recipe may have been brought from, or introduced to China, in the 16th century.[6][7]
Dutch settlers brought olykoek ("oil(y) cake") to New York (or New Amsterdam) in the early 18th century. These doughnuts closely resembled later ones but did not yet have their current ring shape.[8][9][10]
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.[11][12]
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,[13] the recipe being given to the dowager Baroness by an acquaintance who transcribed for her the cooking instructions for a "dow nut".[14]
The first cookbook using the near conventional "dough nuts" spelling was possibly the 1803 edition of "The Frugal Housewife: Or, Complete Woman Cook", which included dough nuts in an appendix of American recipes.[15]
One of the earliest mentions of "dough-nut" 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:[16]
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."[17]
One of the earliest known literary usages of the term dates to an 1808 short story[18] describing a spread of "fire-cakes and dough-nuts". Washington Irving described "dough-nuts", in his 1809 History of New York, as "balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called dough-nuts, or olykoeks."[19] These "nuts" of fried dough might now be called doughnut holes. The word nut is here used in the earlier sense of "small rounded cake or cookie", also seen in ginger nut.[20] Doughnut is the traditional spelling and still dominates even in the United States[21][22][23] though donut is often used.[24][25] At present, doughnut and the shortened form donut are both pervasive in American English.[26]
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."[27] According to author John T. Edge the alternative spelling "donut" was invented in the 1920s when the New York–based Display Doughnut Machine Corporation abbreviated the word to make it more pronounceable by the foreigners they hoped would buy their automated doughnut making equipment.[28] 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 9 October, two mention the donut spelling. Dunkin' Donuts, which was so-named in 1950, following its 1948 founding under the name Open Kettle (Quincy, Massachusetts), is the oldest surviving company to use the donut variation; other chains, such as the defunct Mayflower Doughnut Corporation (1931), did not use that spelling.[29] According to the Oxford Dictionaries while "doughnut" is used internationally, the spelling "donut" is American.[30] The spelling "donut" remained rare until the 1950s, and has since grown significantly in popularity.[31]
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.[32] 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'.[8]
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 (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.[12][33][34] Yeast-raised doughnuts contain about 25% oil by weight, whereas cake doughnuts' oil content is around 20%, but have extra fat included in the batter before frying. Cake doughnuts are fried for about 90 seconds at approximately 190 to 198 °C (374 to 388 °F), turning once. Yeast-raised doughnuts absorb more oil because they take longer to fry, about 150 seconds, at 182 to 190 °C (360 to 374 °F). Cake doughnuts typically weigh between 24 and 28 g (0.85 and 0.99 oz), whereas yeast-raised doughnuts average 38 g (1.3 oz) and are generally larger, and taller (due to rising) when finished.[citation needed]
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".[12]
After frying, ring doughnuts are often topped. Raised doughnuts are generally covered with a glaze (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 (top only) and sometimes sprinkled with coconut, chopped peanuts, or sprinkles.
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[35][36] and "Timbits" from Tim Hortons.[37]
Traditionally, doughnut holes are made by frying the dough removed from the center portion of the doughnut.[38] 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 (yeast-based dough or cake batter) 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.[39] This production method has allowed doughnut sellers to produce bite-sized versions of non-ring doughnuts, such as filled doughnuts, fritters and Dutchies.
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.
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,[40] and a 1991 Toronto Star report found these two were the chain's most popular type of fried dough in Canada.[41]
There are many other specialized doughnut shapes such as old-fashioned, bars or Long Johns (a rectangular shape), or twists. Other shapes include balls, flattened spheres, twists, and other forms.[42][43][12] 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.
Yeast doughnuts and cake doughnuts contain most of the same ingredients, however, their structural differences arise from the type of flour and leavening agent used. In cake doughnuts, cake flour is used, and the resulting doughnut has a different texture because cake flour has a relatively low protein content of about 7 to 8 percent.[44] In yeast doughnuts, a flour with a higher protein content of about 9 to 12 percent is used, resulting in a doughnut that is lighter and more airy.[44] In addition, yeast doughnuts utilize yeast as a leavening agent. Specifically, "Yeast cells are thoroughly distributed throughout the dough and begin to feed on the sugar that is present ... carbon dioxide gas is generated, which raises the dough, making it light and porous."[45] Whereas this process is biological, the leavening process in cake doughnuts is chemical. In cake doughnuts, the most common leavening agent is baking powder. Baking powder is essentially "baking soda with acid added. This neutralizes the base and produces more CO2 according to the following equation: NaHCO3 + H+ → Na+ + H2O + CO2."[46]
The physical structure of the doughnut is created by the combination of flour, leavening agent, sugar, eggs, salt, water, shortening, milk solids, and additional components.[2]: 232 [47][48][42][43] The most important ingredients for creating the dough network are the flour and eggs. The main protein in flour is gluten, which is overall responsible for creating elastic dough because this protein acts as "coiled springs."[49] The gluten network is composed of two separate molecules named glutenin and gliadin. Specifically, "the backbone of the gluten network likely consists of the largest glutenin molecules, or subunits, aligned and tightly linked to one another. These tightly linked glutenin subunits associate more loosely, along with gliadin, into larger