Whether you enjoy doughnuts for breakfast or dessert, they always hit the sweet spot. They’re airy, sweet, crumby, and delicious. But the history of these sweet pastries is sometimes dough-nutty!
They taste better than they sound
The first doughnut makers in American were Dutch immigrants. In the 1800s, they enjoyed fried dough balls called olykoeks, which translates to “oily cakes”. These early doughnuts were just balls of cake batter fried in pork fat! Since the center of the cake didn’t cook as quickly as the outside, people often ended up with raw centers. To solve this problem, some Dutch people stuffed the center of the cakes with fruit or nuts - dough nuts!
Arrr, ye need to make that doughnut seaworthy
Hansen Gregory, an American ship captain, was the supposed inventor of doughnuts with holes. According to one story, Hansen impaled a doughnut on a ship’s steering wheel during a storm! Other people say Hansen thought the hole would make the doughnut easier to digest (not true, unfortunately). 50 years after the incident, Hansen claimed he punched the first doughnut hole with the top of a round pepper tin. No matter how doughnut holes were invented, they definitely solved the raw center problem. The hole increased the surface area so the dough would be more exposed to the hot oil, cooking it all the way through!
Like Henry Ford, but for doughnuts
During World War I, American soldiers were introduced to doughnuts in France. While the soldiers fought in trenches, lady volunteers brought doughnuts to the front lines! After the war, many American guys were eager for another taste of the hole-y pastry. In New York City, an enterprising refugee from Russian named Adolf Levitt began selling fried doughnuts in his bakery. Hungry crowds went wild for the doughy rings! Adolf couldn’t bake the doughnuts fast enough, so he created the first automated doughnut machine in 1920. By 1934, his machine was featured at the 1934 World’s Fair in Chicago, where doughnuts were billed “the food hit of the Century of Progress”!
The billion-dollar doughnut
During the Great Depression, Joe LeBeau moved from New Orleans to Paducah, Kentucky. Because of the hard times, he sold his secret doughnut recipe and the name “Krispy Kreme” to a local store owner named Ishmael Armstrong. Ishmael thought the recipe was so good that he enlisted his nephew, Vernon Rudolph, to sell the doughnuts door-to-door! In 1937, Vernon and two of his friends ended up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with only $25 between them. They borrowed potatoes, sugar, and milk from a kind grocer, whipped up a batch of Joe LeBeau’s Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and delivered them from their 1936 Pontiac!
Faster and faster the doughnuts came
In the late 1950s, Krispy Kreme had 29 stores in 12 states. At the time, each store’s machine made around 75 dozen (900 individual) doughnuts every hour, which is 15 doughnuts per minute. Today’s doughnut-making machines can churn out 800 dozen (9,600 individual) doughnuts an hour, which is 160 per minute! Modern machines make doughnuts over 10 times faster than 1950s ones.
From olykoeks to Krispy Kreme, doughnuts are a classic “Cinderella story”. I’m glad they’re famous today, because a life without doughnuts would be a sad life indeed! What’s your favorite type of doughnut? Click the blue button below to vote! 👓