Why Do Doughnuts Have Holes? - Today I Found Out

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Why Do Doughnuts Have Holes?

May 31, 2012 Daven Hiskey Kyle asks: Why do doughnuts have holes?

Now You Know Because bakers make them that way… 😉 In truth, nobody knows for sure why people started putting holes in the fried cakes. There are some outlandish tales from a sailor, Captain Hanson Gregory, who claimed to have invented the holed doughnut in 1847 at the age of 16. There is even a plaque in Rockport, Maine near Clam Cove that states “In commemoration. This is the birthplace of Captain Hanson Gregory, who first invented the hole in the doughnut in 1847. Erected by his friends, Nov. 2, 1947.”

There are a variety of versions of this tale, but the version he himself put forth in the Washington Post (Mar. 26, 1916) was as follows:

Now in them days we used to cut the doughnuts into diamond shapes, and also into long strips, bent in half, and then twisted. I don’t think we called them doughnuts then—they was just ‘fried cakes’ and ‘twisters.’

Well, sir, they used to fry all right around the edges, but when you had the edges done the insides was all raw dough. And the twisters used to sop up all the grease just where they bent, and they were tough on the digestion.

Well, I says to myself, ‘Why wouldn’t a space inside solve the difficulty?’ I thought at first I’d take one of the strips and roll it around, then I got an inspiration, a great inspiration.

I took the cover off the ship’s tin pepper box, and—I cut into the middle of that doughnut the first hole ever seen by mortal eyes!

…Well, sir, them doughnuts was the finest I ever tasted. No more indigestion—no more greasy sinkers—but just well-done, fried-through doughnuts.”

He then claims to have taught this to a variety of people and thanks to being a sailor, the holed doughnut idea spread throughout the world.

Whether this is true or not (I’m personally extremely skeptical, particularly because Captain Gregory seems to have changed the details of the tale significantly as he aged), most bakers do think that the reason doughnuts have holes is the reason Captain Gregory stated, to get rid of the slightly doughy center.

My personal favorite theory, which seems quite plausible given the timing of it and given that people have been frying up dough and making doughnut-like cakes for centuries and no one thought there was much need to remove the center, excepting some who would put fruit and the like there instead, is simply that it made a convenient way to display the cakes for sale. Around the same time doughnuts with holes popped up in New York City, bagels were also becoming very popular in New York and were commonly put on display stacked on wooden dowels. It may simply be that bakers in New York first got the bright idea to put holes in the dough before frying when one or more of them thought to display the doughnuts in the same way as bagels, on dowels, which no doubt saved display space. With this theory making more evenly fried dough may or may not even come into play.

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Expand for References

Why Do Donuts Have Holes, by Don Voorhees
Doughnut
Captain Hanson Gregory, Doughnut Inventor
Why do doughnuts have holes?
The Donut Hole
Why donuts have holes
Bagels

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Answers

33 comments

Patty O'Heater June 15, 2012 7:01 am
Proper doughnuts are round and the size of a cricket ball. They have a generous helping of raspberry jam inside and are smothered in caster sugar. It’s impossible to eat one without licking your lips.
Kessef October 13, 2013 10:52 am
I think you are very close to right about doughnuts having holes so they could easily be stacked on wooden dowels, but as my African grandmother told me when I was a kid on the beach and asking her about it, it would have been so the beach vendors could carry them on a stick with one hand, while carrying a basket of bottled water with the other. So it seems the holes in the doughnuts came about for the practicality of transport more than for ease of display.
Terry Sheppard October 27, 2016 8:17 am
NOW THE BIG QUESTION IS; Why does Medicare have doughnut holes. I think the government wants all the older citizens to get indigestion from their doughnut holes.
patrick s. belaro August 25, 2017 2:05 am
I’ve read this something years ago, I don’t know if it’s correct but here it goes. Long ago doughnuts really don’t have holes in the middle but fruit nuts, hence the term dough “nuts”. mice eat nuts so to cut the story short when the mice ate the nut, it made a little hole in the middle, and just not to waste the food, the person who made the doughnut removed the middle section of the doughnut, and that’s it, doughnuts with holes in the middle is been made.
Dennis Coburn December 21, 2017 7:01 pm
Ok, maybe donuts have holes so they can be stacked on a dowel like bagels….but, then, why do bagels have holes? One way or the other, someone had to start making something with holes in the center for some reason other in imitation of something else.

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