The Ultimate Guide to Donuts: History, Varieties, and Why We Can’t Stop Eating Them

Few foods carry the kind of universal, cross-cultural appeal that the donut does. Whether you spell it “donut” or “doughnut,” whether you prefer a classic glazed ring or a cream-filled behemoth dusted in powdered sugar, there is something about this humble fried dough that has captivated people for centuries. It shows up at police station break rooms, wedding dessert tables, trendy artisan bakeries, and late-night gas stations alike. It is democratic, delicious, and deeply woven into the fabric of food culture around the world.

This guide explores everything you ever wanted to know about donuts — their surprisingly rich history, the staggering variety of styles available today, how they are made, where to find the best ones, and why, nutritionally speaking, we just can’t seem to put them down.

A Brief History of the Donut

The story of the donut is older than most people realize, and it is tangled with myth, immigration, and wartime legend.

Fried dough itself has been a part of human cooking for thousands of years. Ancient Romans made a dish called globi, which were fried balls of dough soaked in honey. Indigenous peoples across the Americas had their own traditions of frying dough. The Dutch brought their olykoeks — literally “oily cakes” — to New Amsterdam (now New York) in the early colonial period, and food historians generally credit this as one of the earliest North American ancestors of the modern donut.

The hole in the donut, arguably its most iconic feature, has a contested origin story. The most popular legend credits Hansen Gregory, a 16-year-old sailor from Maine who claimed in 1847 to have punched a hole in the center of his mother’s fried pastry so that it would cook evenly. He even skewered the ring on the spoke of his ship’s steering wheel to keep his hands free. Whether or not this story is entirely true, it stuck — and Clarkson, Maine erected a plaque in his honor.

The donut’s rise to mass popularity in America came in the early 20th century, largely driven by the invention of the first donut-making machine by Adolph Levitt in 1920. His device, installed in his New York bakery, could produce hundreds of donuts an hour and attracted enormous crowds. By the 1934 World’s Fair in Chicago, donuts were being hailed as “the food hit of the Century of Progress.”

Then came World War II. The Red Cross deployed women known as “Donut Dollies” to serve fresh donuts to soldiers on the front lines. The image of an American soldier receiving a warm donut from a cheerful volunteer became an enduring symbol of home, comfort, and patriotism. When those soldiers came back, they brought their appetite for donuts with them — and the industry exploded.

Dunkin’ Donuts opened in 1950 in Quincy, Massachusetts. Krispy Kreme, though founded in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1937, expanded dramatically in the postwar decades. By the end of the 20th century, donuts were a billion-dollar industry in the United States alone.

The Many Types of Donuts

One of the most wonderful things about donuts is how much variation exists within a single concept. At its core, a donut is simply fried or baked dough — but within that definition lies an astonishing universe of flavor, texture, and form.

Yeast-Raised Donuts

These are the airy, pillowy donuts that many people consider the gold standard. Made with yeast as a leavening agent, they require time to proof and rise before frying, which gives them their characteristic light, slightly chewy texture. The classic glazed donut is almost always yeast-raised. Krispy Kreme built its empire on a yeast-raised glazed ring so light it practically dissolves on the tongue. Filled donuts — those plump, round ones stuffed with jelly, custard, cream, or Bavarian cream — are also typically yeast-raised.

Cake Donuts

Made with a chemical leavener like baking powder rather than yeast, cake donuts are denser and more substantial. They have a slight crunch on the outside and a tight, moist crumb inside. Old-fashioned donuts, sour cream donuts, and cinnamon cake donuts all fall into this category. Many people who find yeast donuts too airy prefer the satisfying heft of a good cake donut. They also hold toppings like thick glazes and chocolate coatings especially well.

French Crullers

A cruller is made from choux pastry — the same egg-rich dough used for éclairs and cream puffs — piped into a ring and fried. The result is an extraordinarily light, hollow donut with a distinctive ridged exterior. Coated in a simple honey or vanilla glaze, a well-made cruller is one of the most elegant things in the donut case.

Fritters

Apple fritters, corn fritters, and other varieties are made from a looser, chunkier batter that puffs and crisps unevenly in the fryer, creating a gloriously irregular, craggy exterior. Apple fritters in particular — stuffed with chunks of cinnamon-spiced apple and drenched in a thick glaze — have a devoted following. They tend to be larger and more irregular than standard donuts, which only adds to their charm.

Beignets

The beignet deserves a category of its own. Associated primarily with New Orleans and the famous Café Du Monde, beignets are square pillows of fried yeast dough buried under an avalanche of powdered sugar. They are meant to be eaten hot, and the powdered sugar is meant to get everywhere. Attempting to eat a beignet in a dark shirt is a rite of passage for every visitor to the French Quarter.

Cronuts and Hybrid Donuts

In 2013, New York pastry chef Dominique Ansel invented the Cronut — a laminated dough pastry that combines the flakiness of a croissant with the shape and frying method of a donut. The original Cronut generated lines stretching around city blocks and inspired thousands of imitations worldwide. Since then, the hybrid donut space has exploded: there are donut burgers, donut ice cream sandwiches, mochi donuts (made with glutinous rice flour for a chewy, stretchy texture), and donuts topped with everything from breakfast cereal to gold leaf.

Mochi Donuts

Originating in Japan and popularized in the United States by chains like Mochi Donuts and Mochinut, these ring-shaped confections are made from tapioca or glutinous rice flour, giving them a uniquely bouncy, chewy texture that is quite different from anything a wheat-based donut can offer. They come in flavors ranging from matcha and ube to strawberry and taro, and they have developed a passionate following among both donut enthusiasts and those who are new to the format.

How Donuts Are Made

Understanding how a donut is made gives you a deeper appreciation for what you are eating. The process varies by type, but the fundamentals are accessible to any home baker.

For a classic yeast-raised donut, you begin by proofing active dry yeast in warm milk or water with a touch of sugar. Once the yeast blooms and becomes foamy, you mix in flour, more sugar, eggs, butter, and salt to form a soft, slightly sticky dough. That dough is kneaded until smooth and elastic, then left to rise in a warm place until it doubles in size — usually about an hour.

After the first rise, the dough is rolled out to about half an inch thick and cut into rings with a donut cutter or a round biscuit cutter and a bottle cap for the hole. The cut donuts rest on a floured surface for a second rise, which can take another 30 to 45 minutes. This second proof is critical: it gives the donuts their final lift and ensures an airy interior.

The donuts are then fried in oil heated to around 375°F (190°C). Too cool, and they absorb excess oil and become greasy. Too hot, and the outside burns before the inside cooks through. A properly fried yeast donut takes about 60 to 90 seconds per side and emerges golden brown and swollen with steam.

Glazing happens while the donuts are still warm. A simple glaze is just powdered sugar mixed with a little milk and vanilla. When a warm donut is dipped into thin glaze and lifted out, the glaze sets into a crackly, sheer coating within minutes. Chocolate glaze, maple glaze, and fruit glazes follow the same logic.

Cake donuts use a similar process but skip the long proofing times. Their batter is mixed, portioned, and fried or baked almost immediately, making them faster to produce — which is one reason commercial bakeries often favor them.

The Art of the Artisan Donut

The past decade has seen a remarkable transformation in how Americans and people around the world think about donuts. Once the exclusive domain of fast-food chains and highway diners, donuts became the canvas for a new wave of artisan bakers who approach them with the same seriousness they bring to croissants or sourdough bread.

Shops like Voodoo Doughnut in Portland, Oregon helped launch the artisan donut movement with outrageous flavor combinations — donuts topped with Fruit Loops and Tang powder, bacon maple bars, and the notorious Cock-N-Balls donut that was as much art installation as pastry. Blue Star Donuts, also in Portland, takes a more refined approach, using brioche-style dough and high-quality, locally sourced ingredients to produce donuts that taste like the platonic ideal of what a donut could be.

In Los Angeles, Randy’s Donuts — with its giant rooftop donut sign — has been a landmark since 1952 and a symbol of old-school donut culture. Meanwhile, newer spots like Donut Friend in Highland Park let customers build custom donuts from a wall of fillings and toppings.

In New York, Dough serves football-sized donuts in flavors like hibiscus, café au lait, and lemon poppy seed. In Chicago, Do-Rite Donuts has become a beloved institution. In London, Bread Ahead at Borough Market draws queues for its custard-filled, sugar-rolled donuts. The artisan donut movement is now global, with exceptional shops in Tokyo, Sydney, São Paulo, and virtually every major city.

Donuts Around the World

While the American donut dominates global popular culture, fried dough treats exist in nearly every culinary tradition on earth.

In Germany, Berliner (also called Pfannkuchen in Berlin itself) are jam-filled, round yeast pastries dusted with powdered sugar — essentially the German version of a jelly donut. In Poland, the equivalent is the pączki, a richer, denser, and larger version made with lard or butter, filled with rose hip jam or prune jam, and glazed or dusted with icing sugar and candied orange peel.

In Spain and Latin America, churros occupy a similar cultural space. These ridged, fried dough sticks are typically served with a cup of thick hot chocolate for dipping and eaten for breakfast or as a late-night snack after a night out. In Mexico, buñuelos are large, thin, crispy fried discs of dough dusted with cinnamon sugar.

In India, gulab jamun are soft, deep-fried dough balls soaked in a rosewater and cardamom sugar syrup. Jalebi are fermented batter spirals fried crispy and similarly soaked in syrup — intensely sweet, sticky, and beloved. In the Maghreb region of North Africa, sfenj are irregular, hole-in-the-center fried dough rings eaten for breakfast with honey or sugar.

Japan has an donut, filled with sweet red bean paste, and the increasingly popular mochi donut. South Korea has kkwabaegi, twisted and sugar-coated fried dough, which you can find at traditional outdoor markets alongside other street foods.

The Nutritional Reality (And Why We Don’t Care)

A standard glazed yeast donut from a major chain contains somewhere in the range of 250 to 300 calories, 12 to 15 grams of fat, 33 to 35 grams of carbohydrates, and 10 to 12 grams of sugar. A filled or frosted donut can run considerably higher — some specialty donuts top 500 calories easily.

None of this is particularly alarming when understood in context. A donut is a treat, not a staple, and most people consume them occasionally rather than daily. The idea that pleasure foods must be justified or nutritionally redeemed is one worth resisting. A donut is exactly what it presents itself as: a delicious, indulgent, occasion-worthy small luxury.

That said, baked donuts have grown in popularity as a slightly lighter alternative. A baked donut uses the same flavors and aesthetics but avoids the deep-frying step, resulting in something closer to a muffin in texture. They are genuinely good, though purists insist that without the frying, something essential is lost — the crackly exterior, the airy interior, the specific way hot oil transforms raw dough into something transcendent.

How to Find and Choose a Great Donut

If you want truly excellent donuts, the best advice is to go early and go local. Donuts are at their peak within two to four hours of being made. A fresh glazed donut still warm from the fryer is an entirely different experience from one that has been sitting in a display case since dawn. This is why dedicated donut shops that open at 5 or 6 a.m. and sell out by noon are the ones worth seeking out.

Look for shops that make their donuts on-site — you can often tell by the smell of frying oil and warm sugar that hits you when you open the door. Check whether the display case is rotating with fresh batches throughout the morning, or whether everything was made at 4 a.m. and has been sitting since.

For yeast donuts, look for good lift and a shiny, set glaze. For cake donuts, the exterior should have a slight crunch. Fillings should be generous and clearly flavored — a jelly donut where you can barely find the jelly is a disappointment. A Boston cream should have a thick, real pastry cream, not a gelatinous pudding substitute.

The Cultural Life of the Donut

Beyond the bakery case, donuts have taken on a life of their own in popular culture. Homer Simpson’s relationship with donuts — specifically the pink-frosted, sprinkle-topped variety that serves as his avatar of earthly pleasure — has made the donut a near-universal symbol of indulgence and comfort. The Simpsons donut has appeared on merchandise, in museum exhibitions, and as the inspiration for real-world limited-edition pastries at bakeries around the globe.

National Donut Day, celebrated on the first Friday of June in the United States, was originally established in 1938 by the Chicago chapter of the Salvation Army to honor the Donut Dollies of World War I. It has since evolved into a broader celebration of the pastry itself, with chains offering free donuts and bakeries debuting special seasonal flavors.

The donut has also become a canvas for social commentary, artistic expression, and community building. Donut shops, especially independent ones, often function as neighborhood anchors — places where regulars gather every morning, where the owner knows your order, where the rhythm of the place becomes part of the rhythm of the surrounding streets.

Final Thoughts

There is no single reason why donuts have endured for so long across so many cultures. It is not any one thing — not the sugar, not the frying, not the infinite variety of flavors and forms. It is the combination of all of it, wrapped up in something that is unabashedly, unapologetically pleasurable.

A great donut asks nothing of you. It does not demand to be paired with the right wine or eaten with the correct fork or appreciated for its complexity. It just asks to be eaten while still warm, preferably with good coffee, preferably with someone you like. That is more than enough.

Whether you are a devotee of the humble glazed ring, a hunter of obscure artisan flavors, or someone who makes their own at home on a lazy Sunday morning, the world of donuts is wide and welcoming. There is always another bakery to try, another style to discover, another bite that reminds you why this particular piece of fried dough has been making people happy for centuries.