Bob's Donuts - San Francisco CA

After feverish World Cup action nothing calms me down like a gigantic slice of apple loaf from Bob's.  I recently discovered this little piece of magic: Bob's takes the leftover doughnuts, mashes them up, and creates a giant loaf filled with baked apples and topped with raisins.  At $2.45 a slice it's not cheap but definitely worth it, and a good use of day old doughnuts if you ask this reviewer. 

 The glazed buttermilk evoked oohs and ahhs from the Bloughnut review team.  Bob's delivers, again.

Doughnut Dunking Etiquette - 1946

Here is a nice video from 1946 worth watching for anybody concerned with the etiquette of dunking your doughnuts.

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675047264_Dough-nut-Dunking-Week_people-eat-dough-nut_man-grabs-and-eat_dip-in-liquid

Thanks to our international Bloughnut contributor Kelly Mc for the link!

HAPPY NATIONAL DOUGHNUT DAY - Dream Fluff Donuts - Berkeley, CA

Team Bloughnut joins in this national celebration of all things round and fried on the first Friday in June.  This day was first conceived by the Salvation Army 72 years ago to commemorate the women who served doughnuts to soldiers during World War 1.  For an early morning celebration we stopped by Dream Fluff Donuts on our way to breakfast at Mama's Royal Cafe for a sample pack: maple old fashioned, chocolate old fashioned (2), apple fritter (consumed in the Bloughnutmobile before we could get a picture), coconut cake, and crumb cake.

Dream Fluff knows what's up.  The fritter was aptly appley, massive, and the glaze not sickly-sweet.  The old fashioneds had the funky contours we have come to appreciate.  The cake doughnuts were moist, even after 5 hours in a paper bag in my backpack (though in all fairness maybe keeping doughnuts in a paper bag keeps them moist).  Our only concern is the maple glaze is very pale and sickly looking, noted on our maple OF and on the bars sitting in the store.  Overall we continue to give Dream Fluff high marks.

To acknowledge this important should-be public holiday we encourage YOU our faithful readers to in turn encourage your local shops to switch the incorrectly spelled "Donut" in their title to "Doughnut."  If you know us, you know how much "Krazy Glue" and "La-Z-Boy" and all the other stupidly misspelled, condensed, hyphenated, and otherwise annoyingly incorrect names really raise our hackles.

Happy National Doughnut Day, get out there and celebrate with some fried dough fireworks of your own.  Thanks to Bloughnut enthusiast Peter K. for the holiday heads up.

Harvey's Gourmet Mini Donuts at Maker Faire - San Mateo, CA

The Just Fine Design/Build team brought our newest chicken coop design and my two hens to Maker Faire this last weekend and luckily there was a mini doughnut maker on hand to keep us going. Seven dollars for a dozen mini doughnuts is a rip off if you ask this experienced deal-seeker, but as part of an enormous captive audience what were we gonna do? Buy a funnel cake? I don't think so.

Many choices of toppings---I chose maple of course and to be honest the rest of the toppings didn't really register. I should have taken a picture of the sign for you.  Any doughnut will taste better hot out of the fryer and these were no exception. The oil was soy: "0 Trans Fat 0 Cholesterol.."  They had a cool stainless steel dough squeezer/fryer/flipper combination.

Tiny bite-sized morsels of dough and maple goodness. I would have bought another dozen if only some lucky urban farmer would have thrown down $2000 for our chicken coop.

'Til next time--Happy Dough Lucky.

Gateway Croissant at The Crucible - San Francisco, CA

This fella brings in a dozen doughnuts to the Crucible every Wednesday night for his stone-carving class, and I happen to be working in the Studio every Wednesday night. Finally I decided to give these dough-doughs a proper review. They are always good! Check out the Yelp page for some interesting reviews of this doughnuts-and-more joint in the Tenderloin/Civic Center in San Francsico. Tell them you're going to a class at the Crucible and they just might give you a deal. I ate that cinnamon-raisin braid and it was crispy and flaky goodness through and through. Go get one!

Pepple's Donuts via Actual Cafe - Oakland, CA

Team Bloughnut stopped by the Actual Cafe Thursday morning to "energize" at their station as part of Bike-to-Work Day.  Damn the free coffee was good but I'm sorry, the Pepple's Donuts just taste stale to me.  I like my cake doughnuts to melt in my mouth.  Coconut cake and some kind of berry situation.  And we heard a rumor as to why they changed their name from People's to Pepple's...which makes me like them even less!

Interlude.

We will definitely stop by the Actual Cafe again but not for the doughnuts.  Next up is the Berkeley Donut Shop which is right around the corner from my new place in Oakland!!

Lee's Donuts - Vancouver B.C.

Team Bloughnut goes INTERNATIONAL today with a posting from beautiful Vancouver, courtesy of frequent Bloughnut critic Kelly Mc:

Lee's is a lovely oldetimey stand in the public market on Granville Island. Their coconut cream doughnuts are legendary: the homemade filling is fresh, creamy, and not overly sweet. Unfortunately, when we stopped by this morning we were too early for any filled doughnuts. I didn't catch the details of why, but it's something to keep in mind for early morning snacking. 

Instead, I ended up with this cinnamon number, a fluffy cake doughnut with a crispy outer layer, dipped in cinnamon sugar. Perfect for dunking in coffee while watching the European tourists watch the Japanese school kids watch the pigeons by False Creek.

Thanks to Kelly for the INTERNATIONAL review and the photos!