The Real Reason Donuts Have Holes - Mashed (2024)

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The Real Reason Donuts Have Holes - Mashed? ›

It's thought that the inventor of the donut hole was a sailor on a ship in 1847 (via Wonderopolis). He didn't like how the fried cakes the cook served were always doughy and greasy in the middle, and he decided to punch a hole in the middle of the raw dough so that it would cook all the way through more evenly.

To fully cook the insides of the dough, the dough would have to stay in the oil for a longer time, which would lead to the outsides becoming burnt. Punching a hole in the middle of the dough, however, allows the insides and the outsides to cook evenly, creating a perfect donut.

Although the outsides and the edges were crisp, the centres of the donuts were always greasy and doughy. Gregory suggested punching a hole in the middle of the fried cakes, so that the insides of the cakes would cook as evenly as the outsides.

Ultimately, reason doughnuts have holes in them because of the way they are cooked; doughnuts are fried. Since they are so dense and full inside, the heat used during cooking wouldn't be able to reach all the way into the middle to cook the center if these yummy baked goods were simply disc-shaped with no hole.

Statue of Captain Hanson Gregory, inventor of the donut hole : black-and-white photoprint. Smithsonian Institution.

Forbidden Doughnuts

(aka Iced Pumpkin Cake Donuts, inspired by King Arthur Flour) Makes 12 to 18, depending on the size of your donut pans. 1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree. 1 cup sugar. 3 eggs.

This means that after you and your drug plan have spent a certain amount of money for covered drugs, you have to pay all costs out-of-pocket for your prescriptions up to a yearly limit. Once you have spent up to the yearly limit, your coverage gap ends and your drug plan helps pay for covered drugs again.

Many believe Dutch settlers brought the first olykoek (“oil-ly cake”) to America when they landed in New Amsterdam (New York). These doughnuts were the same shape and size as our modern donuts, but they weren't shaped like a ring. The honor of “hole inventor” seems to land with Hanson Gregory, an American sailor.

In fact, there are various types of doughnuts that do not have a hole, such as beignets, fritters, and cake doughnuts. These doughnuts are usually denser and have a different texture and taste compared to traditional doughnuts.

It was the 1940s, however, that saw a real doughnut hole frenzy, says Ellen Dyer, archivist at Camden's public library. "The whole doughnut thing went crazy," she says. The 1940 World's Fair had a doughnut exhibit with a portrait of Gregory and in 1941 the American Donut Corp.

Why do some donuts have holes and others don t? ›

Donuts with no holes in the center are made with a different kind of dough, and they are usually filled with some type of cream or jam. There's no reason for the center to be raw, any more than the center of a dinner roll or a loaf of bread would be raw.

Dunkin Donuts sells "munchkins", which are "donut holes".

Alternatively, some argue that the name evolved from a recipe where hazelnuts or walnuts were placed in the cake's centre to avoid an uncooked middle. Others believe that the knot-style shaping of the dough led to the name "dough knot," which later became "doughnut."

Go to a bakery and ask for donut holes. They are the small round donuts cut from the center of the circle.

Don't let its reputation for kale salads and acai bowls fool you—Los Angeles is the hole-ly grail for donut devotees. Almost 1,500 independent donut shops dish out these deep-fried delights, which means there are more opportunities for a sugar high here than anywhere else in the country.

Fried cakes of dough date back to ancient Native American cooking traditions, but the first American doughnut that we'd recognize as a doughnut hit New York City (then New Amsterdam) in the 17th century, when Dutch colonials started cooking olykoeks, literally “oily cakes.” These proto-doughnuts were exclusively yeast- ...

Today donuts can be baked without holes. But in the past it wasn't practical. That's because when bakers added egg yokes to the recipe the dough became unusually rich and it was not easy to cook the donut evenly. That meant the center was gooey and sometimes raw while the edges were crisp.

Jelly Doughnut

These classic doughnuts are typically round without a hole in the middle, and generally leavened with yeast.

donut hole (plural donut holes) The empty space in the center of a donut. (US, Canada) A small ball-shaped pastry, made in the same manner as a donut, roughly the size of the hole in a donut.