Say you’re on a diet.
Not because you want to be, mind you.
It’s because your doctor, and your spouse, strongly suggested you be on one.
Sure, they were talking BMI and cholesterol. Medical stuff. But you know it really comes down to all those quarantine trips to the refrigerator when you were working from home.
So, anyway, you’re on this (strongly) suggested diet, and you’re actually doing (reasonably) OK with it, when one of your co-workers does something … that changes everything.
Brings in a box of donuts, that is.
“Hey, who doesn’t love donuts?” Patty Strickler asked.
As today is National Donut Day, that countrywide celebration of the hard-to-resist treat, that’s an easy-to-answer question.
It all comes back around
Meanwhile, every day is donut day for Strickler, who makes literally hundreds of them a week.
But first, a quick history of the mostly circular snack with the void, or filling, in the middle.
Anthropologists and archeologists will tell you tales of finding what are surely fossilized donut remains on countless digs across the globe.
There are other origin stories.
Such as one ship captain’s mom in the mid-19th century who made deep-fried pastries enjoyed by her son and crew on voyages.
She’d place walnuts or hazelnuts in the center – literally, “dough nuts.”
According to the lore, the captain had to skewer one on the spoke of the ship’s wheel, because he needed both hands to steer in rough seas.
Donuts and doughboys marched together in World War I, thanks to The Salvation Army.
Women volunteers known as “donut lassies” fried donuts on the frontlines for the troops – they had to enlist helmets on occasion – to bring some comfort food from home.
Bakers and street vendors in America’s cities caught on, and in 1938, The Salvation Army again got back in the fight, launching a “Donut Day” promotion in Chicago to raise money for those vets and others holed up in the Depression.
Circle of friends
Strickler and her husband, Todd, operate her Patty’s Pastries enterprise out of the basement of their home in Preston County.
“We’re state-approved,” said Strickler, who is known across the region for her breads, donuts, cookies, jams and everything else. “We’re an official bakery.”
Her staples are a favorite at the Morgantown Farmers’ Market, and she also does a brisk business out of that basement bakery.
“We have one gentleman who comes by every Friday for an order of 50 donuts,” she said.
She can create donuts of every stripe and filling, but the ones her customers really enjoy, are the simple, glazed ones – the classic.
Everything is made from flour made and milled in Preston County.
“The glazed donuts are our signature,” she said.
Glazed (and confused)
Growing up in Clay County, she wasn’t a baker. She was a quilter. She learned that time-honored Appalachian art from her mother.
Now 66, Strickler was in her 50s, and working a job she didn’t like, when she decided to change some things.
She put in her notice, and started putting quilts together, for flea markets and other avenues.
Her quilts stitched together like nothing, she said.
The donuts, doggone it, didn’t.
“I watched a lot of YouTube videos and I threw a lot of donuts away,” she said, laughing.
“It’s all trial and error. I took some classes, too.”
Wholly successful
The secret to the recipe? Patience, she said.
And precision.
“You can’t just slap the flour and water together,” she said.
“You have to really measure. You want the second batch to look and taste like the first batch.”
Now, a million donuts later – “I bet I’ve made that many,” she said – Strickler is happily sticking to it.
That’s what she tells people at those farmers markets, if they ask.
“I say, get out there and do it, whatever it is. Don’t be afraid to give it a try. You’ll be doing what you love.”
Grab a donut on the way. You know you want one.
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