Hole-y delicious BY GWENDOLYN RICHARDS
Destination Doughnuts
F
rom the stacks on a cake plate under a plastic dome in a lowly coffee shop to lines on trays in local bakeries, all the way up to being set on fine china in restaurants with Michelin stars and impossible reservation systems, the humble doughnut finds a place. At its most basic, it is a simple circle of sweetened dough, deep-fried to golden. Convenient, comforting and infinitely adaptable, it’s a blank slate of a baked good with any complexities coming from flavourings, fillings and adornments. Its history is hard to trace, given almost every culture has its own version — whether ring-shaped or not. But slowly, over the centuries, doughnuts have become a part of the culinary fabric, a coffee-break staple, a weekend
16 Culinaire | April 2021
Donut Club
indulgence and, increasingly, a basic treat worthy of experimentation and elevation. “Doughnuts have been around for so long, they’re part of society,” says Arlyn Sturwold, the owner of Destination Doughnuts in Edmonton. “It has always been popular.” And he can back that claim up — his own 50-year career has been bookended by them. For his first baking job out of school, in Barrhead, Alberta in 1968, Sturwold spent hours in a poorly lit, poorly ventilated back room frying donuts. While the red seal German baker would later work in bakery supply sales, become a pipefitter and then semi-retire, he was drawn back to baking because of those delicious dough rings — opening Destination Doughnuts in 2017. A far cry from those he made decades earlier,
Sturwold has created a more gourmet version of the doughnut, upping the ante through bulk fermentation and runs through a sheeter to build flavour before they hit the oil. With options like strawberry cheesecake, snickerdoodle, matcha, glazed rhubarb fritters, and a lemon meringue complete with torched topping, Sturwold has developed a loyal following for his modern offerings. “This is not a doughnut from the old days,” he says. Their photogenic nature also makes them much more than straightforward doughnuts. “When [people] say they haven’t been in before and I ask why today, it’s either because someone had doughnuts shared with them or they saw us on Instagram or Facebook,” Sturwold says.
