Doughnuts in New York City: From Carpe Donut NYC to Pies 'N' Thighs

Dough, fried. It is a humble snack, fuel for late-night stakeouts, comfort after a day toiling at the nuclear power plant. Its pleasures are prehistoric - fossilized ring-shaped cakes have been unearthed, dating back 8,000 years - and democratic. Free doughnuts were handed to the huddled arrivals at Ellis Island, to lines of hollow-cheeked men during the Great Depression and to soldiers on the battlefields of World War I by Salvation Army volunteers who requisitioned helmets as deep fryers and punched holes with spent artillery shells.In New York City, the doughnut no longer resembles the Dutch olykoek that Anna Joralemon started selling in 1673 from a shop on lower Broadway. Along with a hole, it has acquired glazes in Barbie hues, fillings that wheeze forth on first bite, even do-it-yourself accessories like a syringe primed with jam, waiting to be stabbed in.It has ballooned to a bagel's proportions and shrunk to a teething ring's; lost its eggs and butter (and its quintessential fluffiness), in deference to vegans; bypassed the fryer for the oven (further sacrificing fluffiness); and been crossbred with a croissant, to widespread hysteria and imitation. (On Monday, Dunkin' Donuts began selling its own hybrid.)
Since my colleague Pete Wells last assessed the city's doughnut scene three years ago, some two dozen new doughnut contenders have emerged: bakeries, food trucks, freelance bakers hustling at outdoor markets and restaurants with a serious sideline in American viennoiserie. In the past three weeks, I've sampled 77 doughnuts from 22 vendors. A precious few I ate whole. I have no regrets.I do, however, have mixed feelings about the recent explosion of styles and shapes, which sometimes threaten to capsize the whole idea of a doughnut. My survey made me realize that I'm a purist - albeit not immune to the appeal of the zanier specimens.The yeast doughnuts at Dough Loco in East Harlem are lopsided and misshapen, like soufflés that gave up halfway through. They are almost pranks - not a surprise, coming from Corey Cova, who as chef of ABV, a wine bar, brought the world the foie gras fluffernutter. But they are traditional in texture, compressing slightly under the teeth, then rebounding. An excellent version dredged in powdered sugar suggests an accident with a snow globe; another comes swathed in frosting the color of lox, which proves to be sour orange, a nicely tart corrective to the underlying sweetness. But an experiment with raspberry sriracha, stoplight-red, squanders both ingredients' best qualities.My favorite doughnuts, from Mah-Ze-Dahr Bakery, have a more classic profile. Made in Chelsea and available only online, they are near-perfect circles, with stray bulges that call to mind love handles. The bakers, Umber Ahmad, a former Goldman Sachs executive, and Shelly Acuña, previously the pastry chef at Aldea and the Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, fashion them in the style of brioche - trickier and more time-consuming than regular dough, but richer and more tender. Piped discreetly with pastry cream speckled black with vanilla bean, they are as chic as a non-French pastry can be and priced accordingly: $20 for six (including doughnut holes), with $15 for delivery. Somehow, while I was eating them, this seemed reasonable.A more modest alternative is the sugar doughnut at Du Jour Bakery, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the work of T.J. and Vera Obias, husband-and-wife pastry chefs whose résumés include stints at Morimoto and Dovetail. The hole is barely the size of a quarter, the dough slightly oblong, like a stretched-out zero, exhaling under the teeth. Scattered crystals of sugar cling to it, and crunch. (All the doughnuts mentioned here are the yeast variety unless otherwise noted.)
Carpe Donut NYC, a fire-engine-red food truck and offshoot of Carpe Donut in Charlottesville, Virginia, focuses on one cake doughnut, made with organic flour, pastured eggs and Christmas-scented apple cider, fried to order (with a few ready-made for those who don't want to wait) and given a shake of cinnamon sugar. It may be the softest in town, chewy and undercooked at the center, like a Hawaiian malasada. Eat it at once, while the heat lasts.Specialists in miniature cake doughnuts, including Doughnuttery in Chelsea Market and Carvin's Mini Donuts in Harlem, rely on a machine that drops a knot of dough into a trough of hot oil, where it bobs until ejected by a metal claw. (Sometimes it's better not to know where your food comes from.) The result: small golden pouts, three bites at most, with a crispy veneer. At Carvin's, they come with squeezes of peanut butter and cream cheese, crumbled Oreos and bacon bits, and optimistic names (Love, Happy, Smile). Doughnuttery is more worldly, dusting its doll portions in sugar laced with the likes of lavender, lemon or cacao nibs; all benefit from a dive in dark chocolate, one of several dipping sauces available.Then there are the giants. The butter pecan crunch doughnut at Pies 'N' Thighs in Williamsburg, Brooklyn has the radius of a soup bowl and the potency of a sticky bun, studded with shattered toffee and pecans, with a glaze close to syrup soaking in. Nearby, St. Balmain has a doughnut that is hulkier still, evoking a Parker House roll, browned on the outside and pale within. Judged as bread, it is fluffy; as a doughnut, too dense. A $5 version arrives with a personal syringe, for you to inject it with cream, chocolate or jam.Orwasher's Bakery on the Upper East Side opened in 1916 but only recently revived its tradition of making jelly doughnuts. Here they are filled for you, to order, the pliant balls of fried dough punctured with scissors and shot with preserves that taste of fruit, not sugar. Only a bead of jam on one end betrays what's inside. A few blocks away, Flex Mussels, which operated a doughnut satellite in Grand Central Terminal a couple of years ago, still offers doughnuts after dinner; you can order them to go, plump and approaching eiderdown, with sugar veils and unexpected inner resources, the best among them a vivid Meyer lemon curd.When is a doughnut no longer a doughnut? On the Upper East Side, Butterfield Express, an extension of the venerable Butterfield Market, puts doughnuts in the oven; out come cupcakes, with holes. The low-fat versions at Holey Donuts in the West Village undergo a 22-step cooking process that avoids deep-frying. They are stored, unadorned, in temperature- and humidity-controlled cases that evoke incubators, then frosted to order. The dough is preternaturally puffy but has almost no give, and the frostings are as subtle as giggles.At the vegan bakery Dun-Well Doughnuts in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which has a backdrop of black-and-white photographs purposefully askew and a soundtrack seemingly cranked through a gramophone, a chalkboard announces a mission to "reverently carry on the tradition of doughnut making in a manner that is both innovative and ethical." The doughnuts, mostly the yeast type, are similarly weighty.Slightly bouncier versions, likewise made without animal products, are found at the Cinnamon Snail food truck, which has cake and yeast doughnuts and aims "to help you transform into a being of pure light who can serve all living creatures simultaneously and eternally." The shamanism is in the glazes, including one of Thai basil and coconut milk, bright and grassy, and another of cardamom topped with rosewater-candied pistachios, radiating warmth.I must confess that I have never tried the fabled Cronut, available only at the SoHo bakery of its creator, the classically trained French pastry chef Dominique Ansel. I would not rise at dawn and wait. Instead, I went to Enrico's Pastry Shop in the Morris Park section of the Bronx for a croissant-meets-doughnut by Jolie's Sweet Creations that had mainlined cream but whose layers had sadly stiffened; to Café Boulis in Astoria, Queens, for Greek loukoumades, shiny, nearly hollow rings of fried dough, with oil sloshing at the bottom of their foil bin; and to Grace Street in Koreatown for a ho-dduk, a pocket of dough disclosing liquefied brown sugar syrup so hot that it left a burn mark on my upper lip. (It was delicious.)Every corner of New York has its doughnut now. There is room for all of us, the minimalist and the profligate, the nostalgist and the radical. And for me, too, the doughnut reactionary. Toward the end of my tour, I wound up at Peter Pan Donut and Pastry Shop, which has stood in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, for more than half a century. Step in and you inhale sugar. Choose one, any one. It is warm, bristling and submits just enough, then springs back.
Oh, this. This is a doughnut.If You Go: The Best
Carpe Donut NYC: Truck locations vary; carpedonutnyc.com.
The Cinnamon Snail: Truck locations vary; cinnamonsnail.com.
Dough Loco: 24 E. 97th St. (Madison Avenue), East Harlem; doughloco.com.
Doughnuttery: Chelsea Market, 425 W. 15th St. (Ninth Avenue), Chelsea; doughnuttery.com.
Du Jour Bakery: 365 Fifth Ave. (Fifth Street), Park Slope, Brooklyn; dujourbakery.com.
Flex Mussels: 174 E. 82nd St. (Third Avenue), Upper East Side; 154 W. 13th St. (Seventh Avenue), West Village; flexmussels.com.
Mah-Ze-Dahr Bakery: Online only; mahzedahrbakery.com (delivery Thursdays and Fridays).
Peter Pan Donut and Pastry Shop: 727 Manhattan Ave. (Norman Avenue), Greenpoint, Brooklyn; peterpan-donuts.com.
Pies 'N' Thighs: 166 S. Fourth St. (Driggs Avenue), Williamsburg, Brooklyn; piesnthighs.com.
Orwasher's Bakery: 308 E. 78th St. (Second Avenue), Upper East Side; orwashers.com.
Also Worth a Taste
Butterfield Express: 1102 Lexington Ave. (77th Street), Upper East Side; bakedbybutterfield.com.
Café Boulis: 35-15 31st Ave. (31st Street), Astoria, Queens; cafeboulis.com.
Carvin's Mini Donuts: 381 Lenox Ave. (West 129th Street), Harlem; carvinsminidonuts.com
Dun-Well Doughnuts: 222 Montrose Ave. (Bushwick Avenue), East Williamsburg, Brooklyn; dunwelldoughnuts.com.
Grace Street: 17 W. 32nd St. (Broadway), Midtown South; bygracestreet.com.
Holey Donuts: 101 Seventh Ave. S. (Grove Street), West Village; holeydonuts.net.
Jolie's Sweet Creations at Enrico's Pastry Shop: 1057 Morris Park Ave. (Hone Avenue), Morris Park, Bronx, and other locations: joliessweetcreations.com.
St. Balmain: 178 N. Eighth St. (Driggs Avenue), Williamsburg, Brooklyn; stbalmain.com.Du Jour Doughnuts
Adapted from Du Jour Bakery, Brooklyn
Time: 45 minutes, plus 13 hours for dough to rest and proof
About 11 cups vegetable oil
3 3/4 cups/485 grams bread flour
1/4 cup/50 grams sugar, plus about 2 cups/400 grams sugar for rolling doughnuts
1 tablespoon/11 grams kosher salt
1 tablespoon/9 grams instant yeast
6 large eggs
2 sticks, plus 5 tablespoons/296 grams cold, cubed unsalted butter1. Oil a large bowl. Combine the flour, 1/4 cup sugar, salt and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment. Turn mixer to speed 1 and stir the ingredients together. Add the eggs and continue to mix on speed 1, scraping bowl and dough hook as necessary, until dough forms, about 2 minutes. Increase speed to 2, then add the butter in 3 additions, making sure butter is completely emulsified before adding more and scraping the bowl and dough hook as necessary, about 10 minutes total. The dough should be smooth and stretchy. Place finished dough in the prepared bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and use a floured rolling pin to roll it to a 1/2-inch thickness. Using a round doughnut or cookie cutter, cut out 4-inch diameter rounds with 1-inch-diameter holes. Arrange the doughnuts on the prepared baking sheet, cover loosely with plastic wrap and let proof at room temperature until visibly puffy and airy, about 1 hour.3. Set a wire rack over a baking sheet and place the remaining 2 cups of sugar in a shallow bowl. In a heavy-bottom large pot or deep fryer, heat at least 2 inches of oil until a deep-fry thermometer registers 350 degrees. Working in batches, use a slotted metal spoon or spatula to carefully place the doughnuts and holes in the hot oil. Fry, flipping once, until light golden brown, about 1 minute per side. When done, transfer each to the wire rack and return oil to 350 degrees between batches. While still warm, roll doughnuts and holes in sugar and serve immediately.Yield: 8 4-inch doughnuts and 8 doughnut holes© 2014 New York Times News Service