The Fried Dough Thread.

Thanks for coming by- it was lovely meeting you and your family. Sorry about the technical difficulties- even at the market, we can have networking problems, it seems.

But yeah, that market is good- the biggest and oldest in the city, almost 30 years. You saw it in the ‘off season’, too- while we do have a few farms that can grow stuff during winter, it usually doesn’t pick up with fruit and veggie vendors until Memorial Day.

I’d missed this but saw it referenced in another topic! Going to definitely head to one of the Seattle Farmer’s Markets on an upcoming weekend to catch you! I’ve been to the U-District market but never the Cap Hill one.

I’m curious what people here think about Duck Donuts, which is apparently the new hotness in donut franchises. Their gimmick is that their donuts are always made hot and fresh, and they let you customize toppings like an ice cream sundae. The trade-off is that they only have one kind of doughnut (vanilla cake).

I get the appeal, and people seem to love the ability to customize (even if most people end up ordering from the pre-defined options menu). But I have a very hard time with a donut shop that doesn’t offer any yeasted donuts at all, let alone one without even a chocolate glazed donut. And even though they’re fresh enough to be warm, their donuts don’t seem to have the slightly crunchy outside that you can sometimes get from places that sell e.g. fresh apple cider donuts.

It’s fun for kids to watch them at work, but ultimately I think I wish they were a more standard donut shop. One the other hand, I realize that it’s going to take a pretty hefty gimmick to get a foothold against the Dunkin Monopoly in the Northeast.

I only eat cake donuts anyway, so i wouldn’t miss the others. But I’ve never heard of this place, is it west coast?

Apparently there’s one near me in the greater Kansas City Metro area. I’ll have to try it out sometime.

Edit: @BennyProfane, looks like it’s mostly east coast from the website, but they’re pretty spread out.

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Anyone else picturing crispy Peking duck skin and flesh, hoisin, cucumber, slivered green onions, inside a glazed donut?

Maybe a hoisin-glazed donut? Fried in duck fat.

Holy shitballs.

Yeah, all downstate from me, 3 hours or more. Bummer. Fucking Dunkin Donuts owns this area, they are more ubiquitous than Starbucks. And their donuts suck.

I’ve heard of them, and did a little research a while back- there aren’t any on the PNW as far as I know. Similar idea to me- cooking them fresh. I did know that you could choose your toppings, but didn’t know that they have only one ‘base’ flavor, and a cake dough at that. Huh. I know exactly why they do it - it’s a crazy dance trying to keep yeasted doughs at the right proof level, and trying to train minimum wage workers to get oit right would be a headache (and not to toot my own horn, but the fact I manage to make it work in the middle of a farmers market in all sorts of weather is a feat!).

While this thread is bumped, I’ll give a little update. This coming weekend is my 2nd anniversary of opening the business. I’m making a nice living- last summer I was in 5 local farmer’s markets every week, the other two days were for prep, so I didn’t really have any days off for five or so months. This time of year I’m at 3/week, and one day for prep, giving me plenty of time off to make up for it. I’m currently trying to figure out my schedule for this summer. The biggest decision is whether to stay at my Friday spot in the Pike Place Market. I’d make a ton of money, but logistically, it’d be challenging. Well see. Meanwhile I just keep growing sales. Last summer I didn’t quite meet the goals I’d set for myself in terms of gross sales- the mid-week markets I chose to attend for their proximity to the office/tech hubs took a while to get going and build up a clientele. But then I abandoned one of those and switched to a Friday evening neighborhood thing, and business started to really pick up around all of them at the same time in mid-August. When the season ended, the main Pike Place folks invited me to come down on Fridays, and through most of the fall, I was doing sales in 3 days what I was doing in 5 for the first half of the summer. December took a bit of a dive, and there were some setbacks- the transmission in my '82 Chevy cargo van died so I had to get a new one, and all my yearly permits came due, so that was a knock on my savings, but if been doing so well I had more than enough to cover it. Every week keeps getting busier at this point- I missed my Friday market (had some brake trouble I needed to get fixed), but still made my weekly average at just the Saturday and Sunday markets, which was just insane. Speaking of the Sunday market, they have just (tentatively) started allowing me to serve coffee. I found a tiny local micro-roaster and she’s hooking me up with a whisky-barrel-aged bean to serve, and it is amazing. I’ll have it this Sunday if anyone is coming by before the Seattle meet-up.

Another development - a local co-op grocery chain reached out last September to see if I wanted to teach classes, which I decided to take them up on, despite the fact that I don’t have any teaching experience, or really even any formal learning experience - I didn’t go too cooking school, so I’ve never even been in any sort of cooking class, heh. My first class was a bit of a wreck (went over in time by 40 minutes or so) but every one since then has been great, and every single one has sold out, something the assistants tell me is pretty rare.

I still have never paid for advertising, everything is strictly word-of-mouth. I still change the flavors every week, and am constantly coming up with new fun things. It’s a pretty good life.

I used to love Dunkin’s doughnuts until I tried Krispy Kreme for the first time. Holy shit, what a revelation, I can’t stand Dunkin’s anymore for doughnuts after that. I agree.

Man, Don, I SOOOO want to try your donuts, but it is roughly a 3000 mile drive for me, so its gonna be a while. If/When I do make it out there, I’ll check in with you ahead of time to find out where you are on days I’ll be around (my wife’s aunt lives in Redmond, so I anticipate we will make it out there someday, but it may not be until after we retire).

I think part of the gimmick is if you had them while at the beach (they’re from the Outer Banks in North Carolina) you’d want to get some at home and relive some of that vacation feel.

Don_Quixote, you’re living the dream and I admire you for it; you’re a true inspiration. Doughnuts are proof the God exists and that he wants us to be happy. I don’t know what it is about them that I love so much, but the one thing I look forward to every weekend is going to one of my local farmer’s markets and getting some Amish doughnuts every Saturday morning. I have also tried other places, such as Duck Donuts, a local cake-donut place called Mama Buntz, and another terrific place called Uncle Doodz, but my favorites are definitely the Amish cream filled.

Anyway, this thread isn’t about me, it’s about you. My regret is that I live in New Jersey and will never get to try one of your donuts… unless you express ship to the East Coast? Anyway, I’m thrilled to see your success and I look forward to more of your updates.

If a benevolent God truly smiled down upon us, donuts wouldn’t be just delicious but healthy.

Hahaha that was my thought as well!

Has anyone tried the donut chicken sandwich at KFC yet? I’m morbidly curious. And it’s been getting good reviews online.

I stupidly just got the platter with donuts and chicken separately. I should have gotten the sandwich.

The donuts were pretty good. It goes really well together.

Funny you should mention. I just heard about them other day. A chef guy I used to work with is now doing pop-up chef dinners, and hit me up the other day to do an event with him= fried chicken and donuts. Then texted me back an hour later pissed because he saw the KFC commercial. I told him we should still do it.

Frankly, a sandwich like that just sounds stupid, as does most of the wacky stuff KFC does today. I guess it’s a thing, though.

To make it even more 2016-era Instagrammable, do fried chicken sandwiches on cronuts.

Korean-style fried yangnyeom chikin, topped with Shanghainese red-braised pork belly, ma la house-made cool ranch dressing with Sichuan peppercorns, and kimchi-like gochugaru lacto-fermented green tomatoes to cut the grease. In the middle stack a ramen patty lightly fried in duck fat as the Friends “moistmaker”. Promotion writes itself, include a free Lipitor with each order!

I too went with the platter. It fills a similar niche as chicken and waffles. Definitely recommend loading it up with your favorite hot sauce if you order to-go for that nice blending of spicy and sweet.

I’m intrigued to try it. When the fair comes through every year I get a Krispy Kreme burger, and frankly I love those things, so I can see this working.