Reporter’s notebook
Dizzy Dean’s doughnut baker David Whitespear once saw a woman eat 13 French crullers in one sitting. Depending on your point of view, that’s either disturbing or strangely comforting. Either way, it proves there are serious things going on in doughnut shops across the country. Thus, my quest began — a search to unravel the clandestine subculture of the legendary pastry.
Even in Eugene, where tempeh and tofu are a way of life, there’s a world out there where fried bread is still worth something. And why not? Sometimes life should just be that simple.
But to dismiss doughnuts as a simple breakfast dessert would not do justice to this culinary masterpiece. There is a whole mythology to doughnuts that would put trekkies and Tolkien fanatics to shame. For instance, there’s the Strudeldorf incident.
According to elliskaiser.com, Dutch settlers journeyed to the New World “seeking freedom from the strictly enforced writs of pastry,” after a cow kicked over a giant vat of hot oil, frying much of the city of Strudeldorf to a golden brown. Once in America, the
settlers were free to fry the hell out of whatever bread they could get their hands on. And fry they did.
However, life was not easy in the early days of the doughnut. At one time a solid mass of dough, the pastries were difficult to fry all the way through, leaving a disease-laden doughy center that wiped out thousands, including 12 bakers, known as “the baker’s dozen.”
It wasn’t until after the American Revolution that sea captain Hanson Gregory, visited by an angel bearing baked goods, discovered the best way to eliminate the doughy center was to eliminate the center altogether. Thus, the doughnut hole was born and the ring-shaped treat we all know and secretly cuddle at night was christened.
It’s impossible to put a number on the varieties of doughnuts that have come and gone in the hundreds of years since the Strudeldorf incident. But it seems if not
upsetting, then at least limiting, to devour 13 French crullers when one could choose anything from a Bavarian to Boston Creme.
At Dizzy Dean’s on West 11th Avenue, they know this better than anyone. There has been a doughnut shop in one form or another at this location for more than 20 years. Two years ago, owner Dean Weaver broke his franchise from Winchell’s and replaced it with the current establishment. The “Dizzy” came from a nickname his softball teammates gave him one night after an especially
awful performance on the field.
Whitespear claims that during Dizzy Dean’s busiest hours, between 11 a.m. and noon, there can be as many as 40 people gathered in this corner shop, shoving down doughnuts with a hot coffee chaser. It may not be wall-to-wall people on this afternoon but the place is far from deserted.
A steady flow of to-go patrons wander through as Marjorie Simmons sips a cup of coffee. She’s been a fixture at this location for 17 years, meeting friends and immersing herself in the intricacies of doughnut etiquette, specifically cinnamon rolls — not technically a doughnut but a close enough
relative to pass.
I guess a doughnut veteran like Simmons has earned her stripes and is free to eat whatever pastry interests her. A few tables down, I saw Jim Leppard and his son Chris drowning their sorrows over apple fritters and chocolate milk after the Ducks’ football loss.
Perhaps this is the key to the doughnut’s longevity.
“It’s a simple way to treat yourself,” Weaver said. And nothing says “treat” like an Oreo-dusted chocolate ring of fried bread. While
seemingly timeless staples of
American society like carnival freak shows and Jim Varney have fallen into legend, the doughnut endures.
From Krispy Kreme to Winchell’s to the wacky world of Dizzy Dean’s, there seems no shortage of shops carrying on the grand tradition of that bald dude from the old Dunkin Donuts commercials, proving it’s
always “time to make the donuts.”
Contact the senior Pulse reporter
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