Another good question from reader Bill. I’ll get into this a bit more later, however I think it’s a topic well worth discussing, since crispiness is the signature quality of fried (especially deep fried) food. Think corn dog, think french fry, think funnel cake, think…excuse me for a moment, I’m getting lightheaded…think fried chicken, think […]
READ ONThere’s a great scene in the movie Sullivan’s Travels in which our heroes Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake show up penniless and starving at a diner. They ask for two “sinkers” and a cup of coffee. The hash slinger behind the counter reaches into a big glass jar and pulls out two thick black rounds, […]
READ ONExcellent question Jane G! Just about every culture on Earth has some sort of deep fried dough food item to its credit. Europe? Check. The Arab world? Check. Africa? Check. China, Japan and Southeast Asia? Check, check, check. What’s the deal with that? The deal is that grain, like most food, tastes best when it’s […]
READ ONWe moderns are filled with all sorts of conceits. As such, we’re all too ready to believe just about any made-up thing about our forebears. In the context of today’s discussion, that means accepting without question the notion that generations of doughnut eaters were perfectly content to eat half-raw sinkers for lack of a better […]
READ ONHow did the doughnut get its hole? The number one legend has to be the tale of New England sea captain Hanson Gregory. The year was 1847. Doughnuts, originally brought to American shores by the Dutch, were already well ensconced in our popular eating culture. They had but one engineering flaw: a gooey and undercooked […]
READ ONThere’s a reason why the cake doughnut and the military work together so well. Yeast-raised doughnuts are fussy things, requiring time and many steps to prepare. The dough must be mixed, kneaded, raised, rolled, cut, proofed and then finally fried. Cake doughnuts require far fewer steps, plus don’t need any special environmental conditions. It’s all […]
READ ONAs with so many foods from the age before mass production, it’s almost impossible to nail down the date, or even the year, the first cake doughnut was made. Yet as we look down the ingredient list we can narrow the time frame a bit. Cake doughnuts are chemically leavened (i.e. they employ baking soda […]
READ ONSo here it is: one of my top secret recipes. Cake doughnuts are a batter, not a dough. In professional shops, they’re made by a machine that drops ring-shaped quantities of batter into a vat of hot oil. They look like this, or if you have a bigger operation, like this. These so-called doughnut “depositors” […]
READ ONOh yes, my friends. I (and apparently more than a few readers, too) have been waiting a long time for this. Those of you who’ve followed this blog for a while know my weakness for that fried, torus-shaped device known as the doughnut. Even more than that, the somewhat dense, chemically-leavened, fried, torus-shaped device known […]
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