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Doughnut

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A doughnut, or donut, is a deep-fried piece of dough or batter. The two most common shapes are the flattened sphere, which is injected with jam/jelly or another sweet filling; and the ring doughnut, which was traditionally formed by wrapping the dough around a stick but now is made with a cutter leaving a small piece cut from the center which is separately cooked as a doughnut hole.

Overview

Doughnuts can be made using a yeast-based bread dough (raised doughnuts), or a special type of cake batter. Cake doughnuts are often covered (on top) with a brightly coloured glace icing or chocolate. Some doughnuts are dredged in cinnamon sugar, while others are filled with jam or custard, briefly soaked in a sugary flavoured solution, or glazed. Some doughnuts are made with apple cider (the non-alcoholic kind) and are common at cider mills and farm markets. Many kinds of doughnuts are eaten warm.

Donuts have become a part of Western culture. The cartoon character Homer Simpson is especially fond of doughnuts, while popular mythology has American police officers addicted to them. There are entire chains of retail stores devoted to the selling of hot fresh doughnuts to eager customers, eg. Dunkin' Donuts, Krispy Kreme, Tim Hortons, Winchell's Donuts, Country Style and many other chain stores.

Other sweet fried pastries very similar to doughnuts include churros and fritters.

History

Doughnuts have a controversial history. One traditional story says that they imported into the USA by Dutch settlers.

Washington Irving's reference to "doughnuts" in 1809 in his History of New York is believed to be the first known printed use of the word.

Donuts are also mentioned in the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Before the "newfangled" ring shape became common, doughnuts were often made as twisted ropes of dough. When placed into a pot of boiling fat, they floated until the lower half was cooked, then rolled themselves over to cook the other side. Ring doughnuts had to be flipped over by hand, which was more time-consuming.

Types

In Denmark there are Aebleskiver or Krapfshen (also called Aebeleskiver, Ableskiver or Ebleskiver) which are fried in a cast-iron copper-coated pan with individual recesses for each donut called a Munk Pan, and have a piece of apple inside.

A type of doughnut was recorded in the 19th century on the Isle of Wight, UK, with a different recipe from the type made in mainland Europe.

In Poland the round jam-filled doughnuts eaten especially - though not exclusively - during the Carnival are called pączki.

In Australia, the jam-filled, caster sugar-coated type of donut is traditionally sold hot from caravans at carnivals such as country shows and local markets. They are famous for having a tastiness that is inversely proportional to the degree of delapidation of the caravan from which they are sold. They have been known to burn the mouths of the unwary - for this reason, in some areas the 'feeding of the unwary tourists' has become a thoroughly amusing spectacle.

In Italy - zeppole.

- Chiacchiere in Lombardy - Cenci in Tuscany - Frappe in Emilia - Bugie in Genoa - Crostoli in Venice

In France and in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, there is an item called a beignet which is sometimes described as a French Donut but, as with other 'variants' of fried sweet pastry, the beignet typically has its own distinctive characteristics (shape and texture) which are sufficient in the minds of some of its devotees to object to Beignets being referred to as donuts.

A regional variant of the beignet (popular in Nancy) is called the Merveille.

Spain, Mexico and Brazil have the churro, which may not generally be thought of as a doughnut, but has similar characteristics. A churro is a thin cylinder of deep-fried pastry with a characteristic 'ridged' surface, due to being extruded through a star shaped hole. It is also popular in the US where it is sometimes referred to as a Spanish Doughnut or Mexican Doughnut.

Another contender for the title 'Mexican Doughnut' is the Bunuelo, also known as the 'Mexican Fried Cookie' which is essentially a round, cookie-shaped doughnut, often shallow fried, rather than deep fried.

Yet another Spanish variety of the doughnut are called Porras which are thicker and 'doughier' than churros (and are often served for breakfast, especially in Madrid).

A Middle Eastern and North African variety are called Sfinges or Sfingi.

In Germany, the doughnut equivalents are called Bismarcks or Berliners and don't have the typical ring shape but instead are solid. (German doughnuts are sometimes called Berlin Doughnuts in the USA.) John F. Kennedy once famously said "Ich bin ein Berliner", which amuses some commentators because it has a double meaning: both "I am a citizen of Berlin" and "I am a jam (jelly) doughnut".

In Holland, there is a type of pastry item called Oliebollen which is referred to in recipe books as Dutch Doughnuts (or occasionally as 'Dutch Donuts') which contain pieces of apple and/or dried fruit like raisins, and is traditionally eaten as part of new year celebrations.

Another well known Dutch fried pastry recipe refers to Poffertjes which are prepared in a similar way to Danish Aebleskiver, but the Poffertje pan has more numerous recesses.

In the Hudson Valley (which includes the Catskill Mountains) in New York State, USA, a doughnut is sometimes called an olicook, which derives from the Dutch Oliekoeke or 'oil cake' (sometimes also called olykoecks).

In Hawaii there are Punahou Malasadas.

Another creation popular in the USA which is made with 'fried sweet pastry' is funnel cake where the pastry dough is extruded through a funnel into a pan of hot oil and allowed to 'criss-cross' in the oil in the pan until the string of dough produced fills the bottom of the pan in a kind of tangled random spaghetti-like arrangement which is deep fried as a plate sized 'cake' rather than being the 'individual snack' that a doughnut is. Funnel cake is a dish which is associated with carnivals and funfairs like 'Candy-floss' (Cotton candy).

In the Ukraine there are recipes for fried dough based Pampushky which include both a sweet filled donut and a 'garlic roll' variety. Pampushka are also sometimes referred to as being Russian donuts.

In South Africa they have Koeksisters which are small doughnut 'twists'.

Other doughnut variants with different shapes are: bear claws, elephant ears, yum yums.

Also there is the Native American Indian Frybread (which is fried pastry but not necessarily sweet or with a doughnut-like texture, but there are many variants of frybread, some of which are much more doughnut-pastry-like than others).

Fried Ice Cream, which is a ball of ice-cream dipped in sweet batter and deep fried quickly enough to prevent the ice-cream from melting, is essentially an ice cream filled doughnut.

Doughnuts and Topology

Doughnuts, as ring shaped items, are an important explanatory tool in the science of topology where the ring donut shape (a ring with a circular cross section) is called a torus or toroid, and an example of using the ring doughnut as an illustrative term can be found in popular explanations of the Poincaré Conjecture.

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