Do Not Donut at Dunkin’ You Nut

Yep. Today is National Donut Day. These National Days may be fun reminders to treat ourselves to some of our favorite indulgences, but they’re also stupid. There are just so many of them, it gets ridiculous. For example, today also happens to be National Chocolate Ice Cream Day.

Obviously, the only thing to do is head down to The Dutch Udder and have them make you a hot donut ice cream sandwich. It’s on the menu all the time, but today is your perfect excuse to get one. The glazed donuts they use are made by Schuyler Bakery in Watervliet, aka the town that time forgot, and are custom made to contain no hole.

Otherwise the ice cream would leak out.

Schuyler Bakery happens to make my single favorite donut in the Capital Region. It’s their old fashioned. Today, for the holiday, they have a limited number of maple bacon donuts too. Part of me would love to try them, but I can’t imagine they could be as good as the Park Side Eatery maple bacon donuts of blessed memory. Up in Saratoga Springs they used their own in house smoked bacon. Damn, those were good.

Too many people have no idea these small independent places even exist, whereas the most popular place for donuts in the Capital Region is also the worst. The worst. Worse than supermarket donuts. Worse than convenience store donuts. Even worse than having no donut at all.

So let’s take a minute today to recall why friends don’t let friends go to Dunkin’.

There’s a lot that I’ve written about the ubiquitous donut chain on the blog in the past. Here’s a quick summary of those rants with links for further details.

For starters, I concede that at one point Dunkin’ Donuts used to be good. Maybe even better than good, because twenty five years ago, I had some legitimately incredible donuts warm from the fryer at one of their locations. But I knew the “baker” there and was able to show up in the wee early hours of the morning when they were just made. Similarly to when Mrs. Fussy had a baking gig, and I could pop into the cafe and sneak a hot scone off the baking rack.

But have you seen what’s in their donuts these days? Several years ago, I did a little bit of a deep dive into the ingredients that are used in their donuts. Not the nutritionals mind you. Just the ingredients. Now let’s play a game. If you’re making donuts at home, do you know how many ingredients go into the dough? This recipe has eight. In my research I found that Dunkin’ used 34. And those extra ingredients don’t make it any better. Just cheaper to produce, which is astounding because these are much more expensive than what you can buy at old school donut shops.

Then there is the matter of trust. Because those blueberries in the blueberry donut? Those aren’t blueberries at all. And that’s not the only thing that’s misleading inside those happy pink and orange walls.

Ultimately though, once you’ve had other donuts, the things they sell at Dunkin’ just are not very good at all. All Over Albany made me sit down and eat a dozen of them a few years back and it wasn’t pretty. What I discovered was just how salty they make the donuts at Dunkin’. And it’s not just about them being a large chain. If you compare the sodium at DD to KK, it’s over four times as much for a similar sized donut.

The saddest part about all of this is that here in the Capital Region we have some truly great donuts. Here’s my round up from a few years ago. Unfortunately two of the places are no longer in business, and even when Nibble was still around, towards the end they had stopped making those amazing filled donuts.

But that’s how the donut crumbles.

So if you’re going to celebrate National Donut Day, I ask you to consider the independents. Yes, they may be more of a drive. But they are also better and less expensive. And typically the local donut shops are less of a madhouse. Seriously, I can’t figure out why anyone goes to Dunkin’. Someone recently told me they love their sausage and egg croissant sandwich, but that’s another story.