Donuts, Its a National Day!

As reported in the SFgate this AM.

For those who might want to justify those sticky guilty pleasures in their hands today, National Doughnut Day is actually a patriotic remembrance of the time in World War I when Salvation Army volunteers handed out doughnuts on the front lines to soldiers. The doughnut-dishers were all women dubbed "Doughgirls," and at the time, the plain cake yummies were just exotic European creations.

That changed when the Doughboys came home after the war and their nostalgic memories of both the dishes who dished the doughnuts and the doughnuts themselves fueled the explosion of the sweet greasy industry we know today as the world of donuts.

In honor of their role in both history and the swelling of waistlines everywhere, the Salvation Army declared National Doughnut Day in 1938. It's been a little-known but inadvertently honored tradition ever since.

"I'm kind of partial to chocolate croissants, but give me a good chunky doughnut and I'm happy," said San Francisco Salvation Army spokeswoman Jennifer Byrd. "I'm bringing a dozen to work in honor of the day."

No dolts when it comes to marketing, the national Krispy Kreme and Dunkin' Donuts chains are handing out one free doughnut to each customer today. There are no Dunkin' Donuts in the Bay Area, but the four local Krispy Kremes were cranking out holey ecstasy rings like rivets at a World War I shipyard.

Dad always that that would be a perfect retirement job. You could make donuts all morning and have every day to fly fish on some steam.

It still could happen.

Mountain people when they are not the natural vegan types, would eat some donuts.. becuase it is cold outside in the summer.

I made donuts in two loacations while going to school. Both had way more business than I would want as a retirement job. Both of the bakeries are no no longer in existence. Some interesting facts I learned along the way in making donuts.

1. All donuts are made from mixes. Some mixess are better and basically produce different products within the same classification. I prefer raised donuts with a long meaty texture. This is not what Krispy Cremes sells. Fails in Turlock and Rollen donuts in Merced had such mixes. The Rolling pin donuts in San Bruno used to have such a mix too.

2. All donuts have to be sold on the day they are made. Otherwise, they are day-old.

3. In Gunnison, the police officers would come in on their route and help themselves to all the day old they wanted. They really didn't pick up many.

4. The biggest job in donut making is the making of the glazes. 100 pound sacks of powdered sugar had to be hoisted and mixed with geletain and vanilla to make the clasic glaze for raised glazed donuts.

5. The most difficult raised donuts to make are the ones with the granular sugar. They have to be very lightly cooked and tossed individually in the sugar bowl to get coated while hot.

6. Cake donuts are the most fun to make because the machine the makes them over the oil is pretty cool.

7. The dishwasher needs all the parts to be cleaned in the water because it is much harder to clean tools that have caked on dough then ones that have soaking in water.

7. The worst job of the process is cleaning out the fryers. Every day the fryer oil is filtered and the burned parts donut crumbs are removed. Every so often the oil has to be cooled down and dug out. New vegetable oil replaces this from big blocks that are slowly heated up to frying temperature.

9. In the 70's and 60's and probablly today, 80% of the profit from a bakery comes from donuts.

A little inside info on donuts.

: ) Pat