Buckle up for a doughnut history ride!

The concept of the doughnut has origins in Dutch, Italian, French, and Russian baking — all cultures that mastered dough (especially of the sweet variety) and weren’t afraid of frying.

Archeologists have even found fossilized bits of what appear to be pieces of fried dough across prehistoric Native American grounds. But, much to our country’s pleasure, the doughnut is pretty much an American invention. The doughnut made its way to the Big Apple in the mid-1600s by way of the Dutch settlers who called them “oily cakes.”