The Donut's Journey
A donut is fried dough with a cake-like texture, shaped like a ring. Donuts can be filled or unfilled, depending on the type. The key ingredients are wheat flour, sugar, eggs and fat, either butter or vegetable fat, plus other ingredients that add aroma and flavour.
The donut began as a traditional treat from the Netherlands. Originally it had no hole: it was simply sweet fried dough, sometimes sprinkled with sugar. Its Dutch name, olykoek, means "oil cake", because the outside was crisp while the inside was soft and held oil. When Europeans emigrated to the United States in the early 17th century, they brought this treat with them. Because it was round and as small as a walnut, New Englanders gave it a new name: "doughnut", meaning a lump of dough the size of a walnut, since the treat contained no nuts at all.
The donut with a hole has a history of more than 100 years, starting in the mid-1800s with Dutch immigrants living in America during the colonial era. Around 1847, Elizabeth Gregory, the mother of a New England ship's captain, added various ingredients from her son's ship cargo, such as nutmeg, cinnamon and lemon peel, to fried dough to use as provisions for the voyage. She placed hazelnuts in the centre of the dough and called it a donut. The hole came from her son, Hanson Gregory, who disliked his mother's round donuts because they soaked up too much oil. He used a pepper box to punch a hole in the centre and taught his mother the technique.
Today donuts are hugely popular, especially with young people. You can buy them everywhere from shopping malls to street markets, with prices varying from place to place.
Two Types of Donut Dough
Yeast donuts
Yeast donuts use yeast to ferment the dough and make it rise. The recipe is generally like sweet bread but less sweet, so yeast donuts have a bread-like texture. They use high-protein wheat flour, such as bread flour or all-purpose flour. Yeast donuts are chewy and soft with a stretchy crumb. Besides the classic ring, yeast donut dough can be shaped into balls with savoury or sweet fillings. Savoury yeast donuts are usually coated in breadcrumbs to make it clear they are savoury, and they can be made in many shapes.
Cake donuts
Cake donuts use baking powder to make the dough rise. They have a finer, denser texture than yeast donuts, similar to cake. The batter is fairly runny, just thick enough to drop into the fryer, rather than a dough like yeast donuts, because it doesn't need shaping. To fry cake donuts, use a dropper to drop the batter into the oil. Without one, use two spoons: scoop up the batter with one and gently scrape it off with the other, alternating until you have a round ball, then fry as usual. If you have a donut machine at home, you can drop the prepared cake donut batter straight in.
