A few years ago, I started a baking business from my kitchen.

The timing was, to be honest, pretty terrible. My husband and I had just made the decision to move our family across the country in a few months. I already had a small business teaching cooking classes that I had been working hard to grow. I had walked away from a training required for home bakers feeling overwhelmed and defeated by the list of regulations to follow.

"Do I really want to do this? To invest in something I will leave soon? To deal with all these rules? To make myself vulnerable to failure?"

I decided yes. 

I am so very glad I did. 

It was hard work, physically and sometimes (unexpectedly) emotionally.  I actually weight trained so that my body could manage the labor of all-day baking. There were a lot of bleary-eyed early mornings, cracked fingers from repeated hand washing, burns from hot pans. Not a surprise to anyone who knows me well, but I worried a lot too. I worried about whether a item had baked through all the way. Shed tears over a cake whose frosting somehow looked worse the longer I worked on it (I offered it to the customer at cost. She graciously declined and told me she loved it. Bless you, dear customer.) Probably my biggest cause for fretting was how to price items so that the price valued my time and skill but was one customers would actually be willing to pay. I don’t think I ever quite figured it out. 

But, the joy. The joy of it all! 

I loved the actual craft of baking. The process of transforming raw ingredients into something delicious and (hopefully!) pretty never failed to thrill me. I did THAT? Yes! I did! 

It’s also quite a warm and fuzzy feeling to have people squeal with excitement and hug you when you show up at their house with bakery boxes in hand. This is basically a people pleaser’s dream come true. 

Here’s the core of it, though. I made desserts for birthday parties. For work meetings. For Thanksgiving dinners, for Christmas parties, for Valentine’s Day dates, for Easter celebrations, for Mother’s day brunches. For no other reason that it was a Saturday morning and scones make Saturdays better. When people gathered together and celebrated, the work of my hands, the work of my heart, was part of it.

Frederick Buechner wrote that vocation "is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” 

Baking is my deep gladness, of this I am sure. 

Do I think the world actually needs baked goods? No, not really. What I’ve seen over and over again, though, is that the sharing of food brings people together. When we sit with others at a table to eat a meal, when we collectively savor something delightful, when we share and talk and laugh and sigh and come together over food, we are transformed into what the world deeply needs: a community. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about my baking business lately, rather wistfully. For the time being, it’s not possible for me to start this business again. Where does that leave me with my vocation? 

I’m still sorting that out. I can tell you this, though: this week I made donuts to feature in this blog post. I brought them to a meeting to share. 

People squealed. I may have been hugged. We sat together and ate them. We savored and shared and talked and laughed and sighed. 

The donuts were excellent. The community was even better. 

A few weeks ago, I tasted a delicious Dutch Crumb Donut: tender cake donut, glazed, some crumb topping, liberal amount of powdered sugar topping. The thought of it has been lodged in my gustatory memory ever since. I was unable to find a recipe that sounded like what I wanted, so I paired my favorite basic donut and glaze recipes with an Entenmann’s Crumb-Top Donut copycat recipe. May I confess that it exceeded my hopes for it? That it was the best donut I have made so far? Indeed, I will confess this and suggest that you make these for your Saturday morning.

A quick note on flour safety: the recommendation has been given in the last few years that raw flour should not be consumed due to the risk of E. coli contamination. Bummer, right? However, some sources suggest that you can heat treat flour at home to kill E. coli and render the flour safe to eat without baking. In this recipe, the crumb topping is pressed on to freshly glazed donuts after they are fried, meaning the flour in the topping would not be cooked. To render it safe, spread flour out on a baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 5 - 10 minutes, or until the temperature of the flour is at least 160 degrees when scooped into a small pile. Allow it to cool completely before using to make the crumb topping. 

Dutch Crumb Donuts

Adapted from Stephen Collucci’s Basic Cake Donuts & Entenmann's-Style Cake Donuts

Ingredients: 
Dough:
3 cups all purpose flour, plus extra for flouring cutters
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 large egg
1/2 cup buttermilk (or make clabbered milk: 1/2 cup milk + 1/2 tablespoon white vinegar, allowed to stand for 10 minutes)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
A lot of vegetable oil (at least 48 ounces, probably more)

Glaze: 4 cups powdered sugar + 1/2 cup water 

Crumb Topping:
3/4 cup heat-treated all purpose flour (see note above)
1/4 cup powdered sugar, plus extra for sifting on top of donuts
3 tablespoons firmly packed light brown sugar
1/8 ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
Make the dough: Place the first 6 ingredients (flour through baking soda) in the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the paddle attachment, combine on low. Add the egg and mix on lowest setting for 10 seconds until mixture is barely crumbly. Add next 5 ingredients (buttermilk through vanilla extract) and mix on low for about 30 seconds, stopping to scrape the bowl once, until combined into a uniform, thick, stiff dough. 

Place a large piece of parchment paper on the countertop. Scoop the dough out of the bowl onto the parchment, and cover with an additional piece of parchment. Using your hand, gently flatten the dough. Then, use a rolling pin to roll the dough out to 1/2” thickness. Place the dough in parchment in the refrigerator, and let chill for 45 - 60 minutes or until the dough does not stick when parchment is peeled away from it. 

Prepare the donut making and topping stations: Line a baking sheet with paper towels and set next to your stovetop. Dust another rimmed baking sheet with flour and place a few tablespoons of flour in a small bowl next to your donut cutters. To make the glaze, place powdered sugar in a medium bowl and add water. Stir together until the consistency of thinnish glue, adding an additional tablespoon or two of water if needed, and set aside.

To make the crumb topping, whisk together the first 5 ingredients (flour through salt) in a small bowl. Pour the melted butter and vanilla extract over the flour mixture and stir to combine until it's a paste. Using your hands, crumble the topping until it is the texture of sand with some pebble-sized chunks in it. Spread the topping out on a small baking sheet or plate to dry out a bit while you fry the donuts. Place a cooling rack on a large rimmed baking sheet (or on top of a piece of parchment or wax paper) on the counter next to your glaze bowl and prepared crumb topping.

Begin heating the oil: About 10 minutes prior to cutting, place at least 2” of vegetable oil in a large, heavy pot outfitted with a candy thermometer. Heat over medium and keep an eye on it. Once it reaches 350 degrees, you’re ready to fry. 

Cut the dough: Meanwhile, when the top piece of parchment can be peeled away from dough without significant sticking, remove it entirely from the dough and set aside. Leave remaining dough on bottom piece of parchment and place on counter. Dip a 3” cutter into flour, cut one donut, then cut a hole in the center with the 1” cutter. Remove the donut to the floured baking sheet, and set the donut hole aside. Repeat this process until you’ve cut as many donuts as possible. Dust parchment paper on counter with flour, gently squeeze the donut holes and scraps together, place dough on floured parchment, and cover with other sheet of parchment. Very gently, roll out dough to 1/2” thickness. Repeat cutting and rolling process until you have 12 donuts, give or take a donut (and perhaps 1 or 2 donut holes). 

Fry the donuts: Once oil has reached 350 degrees, use a skimmer to gently slip one donut at a time into the pot, only adding as many donuts as you can without overcrowding the pan. Cook for 1 minute, then flip donuts over using skimmer. Cook for an additional minute, until both sides are a deep golden brown color (45 seconds per side for donut holes). One at a time, remove the donuts with the skimmer and place on the paper towel-lined pan. Repeat frying with the remaining donuts, allowing the oil to return to 350 degrees before adding more.

Top the donuts: After removing donuts from oil, allow them to cool just until they are no longer too hot to touch (just a few minutes). Immediately dunk in the glaze, turning over to coat thoroughly (a spoon may be helpful here). Place on cooling rack and distribute 1 heaping tablespoon of the crumb topping over the top, lightly pressing the topping into the glaze to help it adhere. Allow the donuts to cool for at least 20 minutes, or until the glaze is set. Once cool, use a sifter or small fine-mesh strainer to sift powdered sugar over the top of each donut to coat it. As the donuts sit, some of the sugar may be absorbed; sift the sugar immediately before serving if you want it to look as snowy-sugary as possible. Yield: 12ish super sugary & slightly crunchy donuts with maybe a donut hole or two.