A doughnut or donut is a type of fried dough confectionery or dessert food.
Let’s find out some fun facts about it!
1. The doughnut is popular in many countries and prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls, and franchised specialty outlets.
2. Doughnuts are usually deep-fried from a flour dough, and typically either ring-shaped or without a hole, and often filled.
3. Other types of batters can also be used, and various toppings and flavorings are used for different types, such as sugar, chocolate, or maple glazing.
4. In addition to flour, doughnuts may also include such ingredients as water, leavening, eggs, milk, sugar, oil, shortening, natural flavors or artificial flavors.
5. The two most common types are the ring doughnut and the filled doughnut—which is injected with fruit preserves, cream, custard, or other sweet fillings.
6. A small spherical piece of dough may be cooked as a doughnut hole.
7. Once doughnuts have been fried, they may be glazed with a sugar icing, spread with icing or chocolate, or topped with powdered sugar or sprinkles or fruit.
8. Other shapes include rings, balls, and flattened spheres, as well as ear shapes, twists and other forms. Doughnut varieties are also divided into cake and yeast-risen type doughnuts.
9. Donuts are often accompanied by coffee when they are purchased at doughnut shops or fast food restaurants.
10. During WWI, they were fed to American soldiers. The Salvation Army ‘Doughnut Girls’ fed hungry and homesick soldiers this fried dough during WWI.
11. They used to be called ‘olykoeks’. When they first came to America, they were called this Dutch word meaning ‘oily cakes.’
12. Both ‘donut’ and ‘doughnut’ are acceptable spellings. ‘Donut‘ is just a shortened version, popularized in the 20th century by Dunkin’ Donuts.
13. Zellweger needed to gain weight fast to reprise her role as the eponymous heroine in 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. The actress claims to have eaten “a Big Mac and chips, potatoes swimming in butter, pizza, milkshakes and 20 doughnuts” every day to hit her weight goal in time for shooting.
14. At the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair—which was billed as “A Century of Progress”—doughnuts were given the lofty title of “Hit Food of the Century of Progess.” Because they were fresh and the automated machines made them quickly, they were cheap and became “a staple of the working class” during the Depression, according to Sally Levitt Steinberg, whose grandfather invented the doughnut machine.
15. June 7th is National Donut Day.
16. They may have originally been a mistake. One story reportedly tells of a cow who kicked over a pot of oil into a mixture of pastry.
17. People are named Doughnut/Donut. Although to be fair, only around 10 as of 2011.
18. The American doughnut industry is huge, with numerous fast food chains dedicated to their production. Canada, meanwhile, produces fewer doughnuts (approximately one billion per year), but with its lower population, actually has the most doughnut shops per capita of any country in the world.
19. Made with mashed potatoes or potato starch, potato doughnuts were once so popular they had their own fast food chain: Spudnuts. The mostly defunct chain (there are apparently a few independent locations hanging on, but the parent company no longer exists) was founded by two brothers—an appliance salesman and drug store clerk—in the 1940s. They were the first fast food doughnut chain to open in Los Angeles.
20. Bostonians really love their doughnuts: The city has one doughnut shop for every 2480 people according to AdWeek.
21. The airy fried dough fritters—slightly different from the American circular doughnut—are called “Pet de Nonne” in French, which translates to “Nun’s Farts.”
22. Back in the 1950s, police officers on the graveyard shift would stop by doughnut shops—which were among the few establishments open late—to do paperwork and have a snack. Eventually a reciprocal relationship developed: Doughnut shop owners welcomed the protection of police officers, and police officers liked having a place to chow down late at night, so the association stuck around.
23. Zellweger needed to gain weight fast to reprise her role as the eponymous heroine in 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. The actress claims to have eaten “a Big Mac and chips, potatoes swimming in butter, pizza, milkshakes and 20 doughnuts” every day to hit her weight goal in time for shooting.
24. At the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair—which was billed as “A Century of Progress”—doughnuts were given the lofty title of “Hit Food of the Century of Progess.” Because they were fresh and the automated machines made them quickly, they were cheap and became “a staple of the working class” during the Depression, according to Sally Levitt Steinberg, whose grandfather invented the doughnut machine.
25. Elizabeth Gregory, mother of 19th century ship captain Hanson Gregory, would famously make fried dough pastries for her son and his crew to take on their voyages. But though the elder Gregory may have been an early doughnut innovator (she packed the pastries with nuts, and flavored them with cinnamon and nutmeg), it was Captain Hanson Gregory who claimed to have invented the actual doughnut hole, calling it “the first doughnut hole ever seen by mortal eyes.”
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