In the ring
Chicago not quite a heavyweight in the doughnut world, but some local contenders have a fighting chance
For cheap delight, few things offer more than a fresh doughnut.
Whether your taste is for a wispy, sugary glazed ring or a solid, spice-flavored cake doughnut, little else gives so much sweet satisfaction for under a dollar. Yet it could be even better. Chicago serves some fine doughnuts here and there, but this city doesn't quite grab the ring in the doughnut stakes.
(Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times)
Dunkin' Donuts-- identically machine-made, a bit heavy and slightly artificial tasting -- pretty much circles this town. Even our independents run fairly conservative. We do not have gourmet doughnuts glazed with Valrhona chocolate, stuffed with fresh fruit or flavored with lavender and rosewater, such as exist on the coasts.
"I was just in Los Angeles for the first time in January -- now that's a doughnut town," says food history buff Peter Engler of Hyde Park. Indie doughnut shops dot the L.A. landscape the way hot dog stands do Chicago. "You can get a good doughnut on every block there," agrees Oak Park food blogger Rob Gardner (vitalinformation.blog spot.com). A self-described "doughnut fetishist," Gardner praises Wheeling Donuts, which serves traditional doughnuts like those common in California.
(We did spot some square confections filled with strawberries at Bridgeport Bakery, but we'd hesitate to call them doughnuts. And we're told that real berries go into the batter of the blueberry cake doughnuts at Old Fashioned Donuts in Roseland, but also that they don't always have them -- and they didn't, when we visited.)
Perhaps the Chicago doughnut will rise with the opening of Steppenwolf Theatre's new production, "Superior Donuts." The Tracy Letts play began previews on Thursday. We're waiting politely for press night, so we can't tell you any more than that it's based in Uptown and involves conflicts between a doughnut shop's white owner and his black teenage employee.
Steppenwolf's spokesman could not confirm that the play's inspiration came from any real doughnut seller, but when we think of doughnuts and Uptown, we remember the erstwhile Wilson Donut Shop, a scary spot where the sign used to read, "Donut Shop: Baked 'fresh' here."
Independent doughnut shops seem particularly scarce on the North Side. For whatever reasons, two areas give you a better chance of scoring a great doughnut: the northwest suburbs, home to shops such as Wheeling Donuts and Spunky Dunkers, and the Southeast Side, where Old Fashioned Donuts, Dat Donuts and others make hand-cut confections, a vanishing breed.
Cherish fresh doughnuts while you may. Even the once-hot Krispy Kreme chain has closed area stores in recent years.
Ken Jarosch, president of the Chicago Area Retail Bakers Association, attributes the decline of independent doughnut shops to the problems affecting retail bakeries generally -- competition from big-box chains, low profit margins and rising costs. Burritt L. Bulloch, proprietor of Old Fashioned Donuts, says he now pays $42 for the same shortening he paid $17.52 for a year ago, and every delivery comes with a fuel surcharge.
"We make 85 percent of our doughnuts by hand," says the 70-year-old Bulloch, who has been making doughnuts since 1963 and opened his shop in 1972. "It's a lot of work."
Since Letts declined to be interviewed on his doughnut druthers, you'll have to be satisfied with ours. We love paczki and churros and long johns, but for this story we stuck mainly to round American-style doughnuts, with a hole.
When it comes to doughnuts, freshness trumps. A hot doughnut, fresh from the fryer, beats almost anything, which is why, when they're hot, Krispy Kreme shops often tempt you with one, gratis, as you come in the door, enticing you to a larger order.
Cake doughnuts should be light and moist inside with, ideally, the slightly crisp exterior that indicates extreme freshness. Raised doughnuts should be sweet, airy, wispy confections.
"Around here, the most popular is glazed," Bulloch says.
A hefty infusion of nostalgia flavors doughnut tastes. Sampling the made-to-order cinnamon-dusted doughnut holes served at the Depot American Diner in Austin, Engler compared them unfavorably to Calumet Bakery's cinnamon cake doughnut. "These are a different species. I think I like the Calumet one better because it was exactly like the ones I had as a kid."
Leah A. Zeldes is a local free-lance writer.