NYC’s bakers of doughnuts (and other pastries) have tempted the city’s sweet tooth for centuries. 

Time to make the doughnut chapter!

There is no logical reason for eating a doughnut, except that they are diabolically irresistable. Logic (and health concerns) must be abandoned to experience sheer doughnut joy. The round, deep-fried delicacy, often filled, frosted or sprinkled, has been described as “the ultimate comfort food,” “a hole-some treat,” and “cheaper than therapy.” I say that people who claim they don’t like doughnuts are lying, and shouldn’t be involved in any food-related activities.

Some may ask, “What’s so ‘New York’ about doughnuts? Isn’t Boston the doughnut capital of the universe? How about those gazillion doughnut shops in Los Angeles? What’s so special about New York doughnuts?”

First of all, most of Boston’s doughnuts, like the rest of New England’s, are from a single brand (you know who.) All locations offer the same roster of mass-produced product. Drinks are actually the chain’s top draw, doughnuts are secondary. And as for L.A., since the owners of over 1,500 “independent” doughnut shops were trained by a single ingenious Cambodian refugee, Ted Ngoy, all of their doughnuts are very similar, as are their bright pink boxes. Innovative sales tactics have become more important than innovative doughnuts.

A recent study conducted by The Washington Post and the website Yelp revealed that the city with the highest concentration of doughnut places per person is...drumroll, please...Providence, Rhode Island! Of course, they’re almost all Dunkins.

The hole truth 

The fact is, these other places copied New York City’s original recipe. Doughnuts are a Dutch food, once called olykoeks, introduced by the city’s Dutch colonists in 1624, and enjoyed by New Yorkers for 400 years. That makes New York the birthplace of the doughnut, surely an iconic NYC (and American) food. In fact, many of the country’s favorite sweet treats were introduced by the Dutch in Manhattan, like panenkoeken (pancakes), wafels (waffles), koekjes (cookies), and oliebollen, what we today would call doughnut holes.

Like any other cuisine, doughnut originality requires experimentation, which can’t be practiced in a mass-market outlet. Truly independent bakers, a.k.a. “Mom and Pop” shops, are the “think tanks” of sinkers, creating the most spectacular doughnutty achievements. The Big Apple has its share of Dunkins and Krispys, but why would anyone settle for corporate baked goods when there is such a wealth of inspired bakeshops constantly reinventing the classic dough ring? We’ll meet some of these artisanal bakers a bit later. But first, let’s cook up some history.

Doughnut Lore 

The city’s first doughnut experimenter was Bastiaen Janz Krol, a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church (which still exists in Manhattan, the oldest Protestant congregation in North America.) In the 1630s his fondness for sweetened fried dough led the populace to dub these treats “Krol-ers,” or crullers. Today, almost all of the city’s coffee carts carry the direct descendants of this Dutch “twist,” so everyone can savor a taste of old New Amsterdam.

America’s first doughnut shop was opened in 1673 by a Dutch woman, Mrs. Anna Joralemon, who sold her olykoeks on Broadway near Maiden Lane. They must have been delicious...they named a Brooklyn street after her.

The word “doughnuts” first appeared in print in 1809, when none other than Washington Irving described a Dutch meal in his History of New York: “It was always sure to boast of an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called dough-nuts or oly koeks: a delicious kind of cake, at present known scarce to this city, except in genuine Dutch families.”

The mother-and-son team of Elizabeth and Hanson Gregory made major contributions to the doughnut legacy. Elizabeth was first to combine unique additions into her olykoeks, such as nutmeg (the quintessential doughnut spice), cinnamon, nuts, and lemon. These were provided by her son, who sailed the world in search of flavors. Captain Gregory was also first to put the hole in doughnuts: legend has it that rough seas required both of his hands to steer his ship, prompting him to skewer his doughnut onto a spoke of his ship’s wheel. Later in life the Captain revealed the true story: because the dense doughnut middle rarely cooked through and remained raw, he actually cut and removed it, creating the world’s first doughnut hole. (By the way, most doughnuts are formed into rings at their inception; the holes are not “punched out.” The so-called doughnut holes you buy today are a specially-made product, not remainders from other doughnuts.)

Gothamites loved their fried dough rings so much that when Thanksgiving became an official state holiday in 1817, New York families added doughnuts to their traditional meal of turkey, stuffing and pie. The beloved doughnut was often the centerpiece of Gotham’s holiday celebrations for many decades...it represented the city’s heritage like no other food.

Doughnuts were a popular street snack in the mid-1800s just as they are now. Vendors carrying huge coffee urns offered basketfuls of doughnuts to the hungry, bustling crowds. Downtown newspaper crews could get their fix at baking joints like Buttercake Dick’s, where journalists and newsboys enjoyed “a peculiar sort of heavy biscuit with a lump of butter in its belly” with coffee for 3 cents. It was here the slang term “sinker” originated, for obvious reasons.

Doughnuts go to war

Because they’re so easy to make, doughnuts became associated with wartime cuisine. In 1864, during the Civil War, a fund-raiser was held in Union Square called the Metropolitan Fair. It featured a Dutch-themed restaurant, Knickerbocker Kitchen, which served original-recipe olykoeks and other Dutch treats.

But it was during the First World War that the doughnut really took off. Millions of them were served in the front-line trenches of France by brave American women, volunteers with the Salvation Army, who were nicknamed “Doughnut Dollies.” It all started when the first “dolly,” Helen Purviance, stirred up some simple battlefield-available ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder and canned milk, then formed doughnuts by hand and fried them in a borrowed soldier’s helmet. The aroma attracted hungry soldiers who lined up for this welcomed taste of home, served by a pretty face and caring hands. The Dollies continued their tradition during World War II. Countless thousands of soldiers returned home with only one fond war memory: doughnuts in the ditches.

New York was ready for them. Once again, Union Square became doughnut headquarters, with a Salvation Army hut and many local bakeries turning out thousands of doughnuts for the “welcome home” effort. A sinker and coffee sold for ten cents to anyone in uniform. Doughnuts were even auctioned off on the steps of Federal Hall...one sold for $5,000! In the 1920s, the Salvation Army began offering free doughnuts to immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, making it their first taste of American food. The humble doughnut had become a national symbol of home, patriotism, and welcoming. In 1938 the S.A. established National Doughnut Day in honor of the Doughnut Dollies, celebrated annually on the first Friday in June.

Gearing up for the doughnut deluge

Traditionally a hand-made item, local bakeries and coffee shops could not keep up with the new doughnut demand. Enter one Adolf Levitt, owner of a popular Harlem bakery which was always running out of doughnuts. In 1920, Levitt invented what he called “The Wonderful Almost-Human Doughnut Machine,” which automatically turned out cascading rows of hot, freshly-fried treats. His brightest idea may have been placing the machine in the window of his new Times Square bakery, the Mayflower Coffee Shop. It immediately attracted throngs of folks gawking at his mesmerizing contraption, while inhaling the intoxicating aroma which Levitt vented out to the street.

Doughnuts in popular culture

The basic workings of the doughnut machine may be remembered by fans of the book Homer Price by Robert McCloskey. When young Homer takes over the reins of his uncle’s lunch room, the doughnut machine’s hopper is overfilled, and the off button becomes inoperative. Uh-oh! Thousands of unstoppable doughnuts fill the eatery, stacked on every chair, counter and shelf. McCloskey’s clever drawings beautifully illustrate the dilemma (and also inspired me to become an artist.)

New York composer Irving Berlin romanticized doughnuts with a song for Broadway’s Stage Door Canteen. It contained the immortal line, “I sat there dunking doughnuts till she caught on.” And speaking of dunking, who can forget rugged Clark Gable teaching runaway heiress Claudette Colbert the finer points of dunking a “sinker” in the film It Happened One Night?

Time to eat the doughnuts

So...if you like doughnuts, you’ve come to the right city. I highly suggest skipping the nearest Dunkin or Krispy and discovering one of the bakeshops which specialize in unique, inventive doughnuts. Whether you prefer the yeast-risen kind or cake doughnuts (which get their rise from baking powder) you have many places to choose from.

None evokes New York City’s past better than Peter Pan Donut and Pastry Shop in Brooklyn’s lovely Greenpoint neighborhood. In operation for 60 years, a seat at the serpentine counter, munching on Red Velvet, Cannoli Cream or fresh Coconut doughnuts, is a quintessential NYC experience.

Would you like to get your vehicle cleaned while munching some delicious d-nuts? You can at Underwest Doughnuts, located in a car wash along the West Side Highway. Leske’s Bakery in Bay Ridge Brooklyn turns out classic doughnuts as well as black and white cookies and Brooklyn Blackout Cake. Moe’s Doughs and Dun-Well are two other Brooklyn standouts.

A more modern take on the nuts of dough can be found at the fantabulous Doughnut Pub, open 24/7 on Broadway in the East Village. Their selection is so huge it may take you a half hour to make your decision. Every kind of doughnut you can imagine is on display. Truly doughnut heaven. My favorite? Maple-Bacon!

Then there are the innovators: bakers who have taken doughnuts to over-the-top artisanal perfection. The inventor of this art form is Mark Israel, who started experimenting in his Lower East Side apartment, delivering hand-crafted doughnuts via his bicycle, and opening his Doughnut Plant on Grand Street. Meanwhile in Soho, master baker Dominique Ansel introduced the miraculous Cronut in 2013, and the lines along Spring Street have never stopped forming. Both of these doughnut masters as well as inventor Adolf Levitt are profiled in Meet the Lords of the Rings, which you can enjoy by selecting below (there’s another link at the end of this chapter):

There are so many New York variations on the doughnut I don’t know where to begin. The latest thing is the mochi doughnut, made with chewy sticky rice in the dough; try them at The Dough Club on Baxter Street. More traditional offerings include the Czech kolache, sweet or savory (from Brooklyn Kolache), and Spanish churros, the cruller’s kissing cousin (at La Churreria on Mulberry Street...dip them in chocolate!) Then there’s that traditional Jewish treat, sufganiyot, long a city staple. These pillowy fried jelly doughnuts represent the Hanukkah miracle of the oil that burned for eight days instead of one. See? Fried foods are good for your soul!

More than doughnuts

Often, bakeries selling doughnuts also sell pastries. It makes sense: both are morning treats which New Yorkers enjoy with coffee (while rushing to work, naturally.) Places which specialize in pastry-making are called patisseries (same in French and Italian, but the French put a caret over the â.) Patisserie also refers to the baked goods themselves.

Since New York is the most diverse place on earth, where over 170 different languages are spoken, it hosts an astounding array of international pastries to sample: French beignets, German streudel, Italian zeppole, Polish paszteciki, Greek galaktoboureko, Chinese mooncakes, Portuguese malasadas, Turkish söbiyets, English pasties, Peruvian picarones, Hungarian pogácsa, Japanese dorayaki, Israeli rugelach, Russian vatrushka, Brazilian pastel, Swedish kanelbulle, Danish danish, and many more. Find an ethnic neighborhood in New York City and you’ll also find their coffee/pastry shops, packed with morning locals.

The early Dutch excelled at all kinds of baked goods, but if we’re talking pastries, we have to talk about the French, the undisputed masters of combining flour and fat. They are credited with perfecting four of the basic types of pastry dough: flaky (butter repeatedly folded into the dough, or “laminated,” used for croissants), puff (a lighter laminated dough), shortcrust (or “pâte brisée,” a chilled, rolled dough like pie crust), and choux (a cooked dough which can be piped, such as eclairs.) For the fifth type of dough, phyllo (extremely thin sheets) we have the Ancient Greeks and Middle Eastern cultures to thank.

The Delmonico Brothers, French-speaking Swiss immigrants, opened a pastry shop on William Street in 1827, offering strictly French confections in an all-male neighborhood full of chop houses and oyster saloons. At first they attracted continental tourists, then wealthy financial scions. Their main competitor was around the corner: Francois Guerin, whose otherwise dingy pastry shop offered a ladies’ dining room, an innovation. Perhaps New York’s most renowned pastry showman was Auguste Louis de Singeron, a nobleman who fled the French Revolution. He opened a spectacular confiserie (confectionery) and patisserie on Pine Street, filling its large windows with gingerbread figures of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and a marzipan version of the Tuileries.

A neighborhood known as “Quartier Francais” developed in the area of Greenwich Village and Soho in the 1870s, south of Washington Square Park. Long since overtaken by Italians and Bohemians, traces of French patisserie remain. It is here we will search for the paragon of French baking skills:

Stalking the wild croissant 

The latest trend in NYC uber-snacking is undoubtedly this flaky French treat. Pastry chefs have reshaped it, deconstructed it, stuffed it, combined it with other pastries, and otherwise fueled a new croissant-mania. It all began with Dominique Ansel’s cronut in 2013; the long lines formed, and soon his cronuts were being re-sold on eBay for hundreds of dollars per dozen. But Ansel also makes superb regular croissants, and many other French pastries. In his Soho bakery or his Workshop in the Flatiron District you will see and taste croissant perfection: I swear if you viewed one under a microscope not one crumb would be out of place.

Waiting on line for a unique treat is nothing new for New Yorkers. And when you call it The Suprême, as the Lafayette Grand Café and Bakery in Noho does, you better rope off the surrounding sidewalks (they have.) This Suprême is a big circular croissant, adorned with cream and toppings (the flavor changes every month, like the cronut.) There are three “drops” per day, so get ready to wait for an hour, plunk down ten bucks, quickly post it to your TikTok, then watch the line get even longer, you influencer you.

Can a good croissant be had without waiting and overspending? You bet! Walk into Marie Blachére on Sixth Avenue in the Village and you’ll be greeted by a mile-long display of hundreds of French pastries, including huge bins of freshly-baked croissants at your beck and call (and you can’t beat the $2.75 price.)

Finding the epitome

For the most refined and spectacular pastries, there are two bakeries in the former Quartier Francais turning out masterpieces. In Sweet Rehab on Sullivan Street you will not recognize a single pastry; the entire process has been stunningly reinvented. Almost everything you order is made for you on the spot. They display their massive “brioche croissants” under glass domes, as well as examples of their tarts, eclairs and a stupendous “Le Miel” which would confound traditionalists, but are absolutely delicious.

If you are a traditionalist, you must visit Ladurée on West Broadway in Soho. Their pastries are superb, and their macarons have been touted as the finest in the world. Best of all, their statued dining rooms and expansive, tree-shaded garden are among the most beautiful in the city.

Today there is a new “Little Paris”: one block on Centre Street between Broome and Grand Streets. There you’ll find a wine bar, a home decor shop, a place which teaches French, and an outpost of Maman, the city’s renowned bakery and lunch eatery.

The best of the rest

There are so many classic pastry shops in New York that I couldn’t possibly include them all. If you’d like to hang with writers and Columbia professors, you’ll love The Hungarian Pastry Shop on Amsterdam Avenue. If you’d rather be with “Brooklynistas,” try the time-honored Court Pastry Shop or Caputo’s, both on Court Street. Julien’s makes banging croissants, in the Upper East Side and Park Slope. For Italian pastries try Caffe Roma or Caffe Palermo (the best cannolis) in Little Italy, Veniero’s in the East Village, Pasticceria Rocco in the West Village, DeLillo’s or Morrone’s in the Bronx, and Alfonso’s in Staten Island. If you like Greek baked goods, try Pi Bakerie in Soho, or just wander around Astoria, Queens and you’ll run into many of them. There are countless vegan and gluten-free bakeries around town too. I’ll leave you to Google. 

And if you like doughnuts, you’ll love…