For Bay Area fans of fried sweet dough — and who isn’t? — there’s a wide world of doughnuts out there. Malasadas from the Portuguese and Hawaiian traditions. American-Japanese mochi delights. Vegan creations that taste just as good as their counterparts. And what may soon become a trend, sourdough doughnuts.
Here are a dozen of our favorite shops — some innovative, some rooted in tradition, some with pop-up hours and some open 24/7. Read, try some, then tell us about your go-to spot in the form at the bottom of the article. We’ll share those with readers.
Founders Donuts, Lafayette
The best-kept secret in Lamorinda is this pandemic-era pop-up, which specializes in handmade old-fashioned and milk bread doughnuts. Don’t expect glazed, raised, fluffy carb clouds. (For those, head a couple of blocks away to the classic Johnny’s on Mt. Diablo Boulevard, makers of doughnut holes so addictive, a dozen feeds … um … me.)
Founders has the fancy doughnuts you bring to brunch, where you hope no one notices that the bakery’s signature doughnut holes, perched atop their torus partners, might possibly have gone awol en route (nom nom).
Order ahead — a six-pack sampler ($25), perhaps, or a pair of threesies that showcase flavors such as vividly violet blueberry, classic vanilla and bittersweet chocolate. Then roll up to the Lafayette Kitchen, a commercial kitchen space, on Saturday morning and text your name to a super secret number (it’s on your receipt) to pick up your treats, each topped with a matching doughnut hole.
Japanese milk bread is, as you might expect, given the name, bready which gives those doughnuts a texture you don’t often find in the doughnut genre. The old-fashioned doughnuts are classics, with a square raised edge on the top, all the better for holding those doughnut holes.
The bite: The glaze on the blueberry is gorgeous, but the tangy, citrusy, lemon-poppy seed old-fashioned is our fave.
Good to know: No walk-ups! The pre-order window runs from Monday noon to Thursday evening.
The details: Pickup is 7 to 10 a.m. Saturdays at the Lafayette Kitchen, 271 Lafayette Circle in Lafayette; www.foundersdonuts.com.
Stan’s Donut Shop, Santa Clara
How can you tell a fabulous doughnut shop from a good one?
First, you’ll find the crowd-control instructions posted outside telling customers how and where to line up and limiting the number allowed inside to order at any time (six). When you get in the door, you’ll see a wall of framed reviews and accolades. Generations’ worth of raves. Next, you will discover that this doughnut shop is so revered that it has its own line of merch.
And finally, the taste test. Stan’s warm, fresh, glazed doughnuts ($1.50) — pillowy and perfect — have been ranking among the Bay Area’s very best since 1959. They’re the stars of a full lineup that includes maple bars, old-fashioneds, buttermilk doughnuts and more.
The nostalgic setting is a bonus. Founded by Stan Wittmayer and run by son Rick after his father’s retirement, the shop remains in the family’s hands. The Wittmayer daughters have wisely maintained the classic diner look, from the vintage signs to the old-school counter seating.
The bite: Besides the popular glazed doughnuts, Stan’s makes a terrific buttermilk doughnut du jour ($2). Wednesday, for example, is the day for strawberry flavored, and Saturday is lemon. From now until Thanksgiving, pumpkin buttermilks will be baked every Friday. The cinnamon rolls ($3) are also a big hit.
Good to know: No weak diner coffee here. Stan’s serves the “Moka Java” blend from Peerless Coffee, a top Oakland roaster.
The details: Open from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at 2628 Homestead Road, Santa Clara. Place phone orders at least 24 hours in advance at 408-296-5982. Stan’s accepts cash, checks only. (If downtown San Jose is closer for you, the owners of Academic Coffee, 499 S. Second St., pick up Stan’s doughnuts to sell every day at their shop.)
Ocean Malasada Co., San Mateo, San Ramon, Walnut Creek and other locations
Biting into these fluffy malasadas is like sinking your teeth into a cloud, if that cumulus were coated in sugar crystals and lined with custard. Randy and Dee Santos first started making the Portuguese confections, which are so popular in Hawaii, in 2016.
Today, Randy co-owns San Francisco’s 5-month-old Far from Paradise cafe, which offers Hawaiian desserts, including malasadas and shave ice. You can pick up Ocean Malasada’s irresistible doughnuts there and at other locations around the Bay each week.
The bite: The Nutella malasada is wonderfully decadent, and the haupia version is filled with Hawaiian coconut pudding.
Good to know: No need to go to San Francisco. You can pick up your sugary treats at the San Ramon or Walnut Creek farmers markets or at the pop-up held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday-Friday inside San Mateo’s Takahashi Market.
The details: The San Francisco shop is open from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Thursday-Monday at 296 Ocean Ave.; farfromparadise.square.site.
Donut Wheel, Livermore
Pick up some nostalgia alongside some old-fashioned, maple-glazed perfection at Livermore’s Donut Wheel. Walking through the doors of this retro doughnut parlor feels like taking a step back in time to a cash-only era, where you can buy a doughnut hole for a quarter.
Manager Savanna Taing says she learned the art of doughnut baking at the shop from her parents, who immigrated to the U.S. from Cambodia in the 1980s. They picked up the craft themselves from relatives who worked at Bob’s Donuts in Palo Alto before taking ownership of the Donut Wheel. Today, Taing trains all the bakers and employees at the shop.
The bite: Check out the maple old-fashioned with its thick maple glaze and crispy exterior. Another customer fave is the enormous apple fritter, with cinnamon spice and glaze infused into each bubbly bite. The apple bits are clumped mostly toward the center of the pastry.
Good to know: This doughnut shop is cash-only – raised, cake and old-fashioned doughnuts are $1.65 each while fancier cinnamon rolls, apple fritters and cream-filled doughnuts come in at $2.35.
The details: Open daily at 2017 First St., Livermore.
Psycho Donuts, Campbell, Santa Clara and other locations
Let’s see, how should one describe a doughnut shop whose top-sellers go by names like Cereal Killer, Boston Scream Pie and the Unicorn Fart?
Wacky. Irreverent. Outrageous. And tasty.
And now available at more locations. Psycho, which launched in 2009 in a small Campbell strip mall, now also operates a large kiosk at Valley Fair in Santa Clara and has branched out to offer doughnuts in the Levi’s Stadium suites for Niners games and concerts.
The flavors are bold and the names are fun (mostly). Among the regular and rotating flavors (about $5 each) are Nutella the Hun, This One, That One, the two-sided Jekyll & Hyde, Strawberry Fields Forever, Glazed & Confused, Dirty Chai and the Marla, a maple bar sprinkled with Butterfinger crumbs.
For holidays, including Halloween, Psycho offers a surprise box of specialty doughnuts, available only by advance reservation.
The bite: We’re fans of the, ahem, Dead Elvis, which pays tribute to the king’s favorite sandwich with peanut butter and banana filling, bacon and a drizzle of jelly. And, if you see the Passionista on the menu, buy a couple. That doughnut is filled with a lovely passionfruit curd.
Good to know: Psycho bakes and delivers an exclusive doughnut, the Boston Whoopie Pie, every day to four Nob Hill supermarkets (Los Gatos, Mountain View, Campbell, San Jose).
The details: Open daily at Valley Fair, 2855 Stevens Creek Blvd., from 11 a.m. or until they sell out (Level 2, near Nordstrom), and Thursday-Sunday in Campbell, 2006 S. Winchester Blvd., from 8 a.m. until sold out. www.psychodonuts.com
Mochiholic, Pleasanton
This dessert shop, which offers colorfully decorated mochi doughnuts, opened in Pleasanton in 2021. The doughnut menu changes seasonally, but classic flavors include strawberry, matcha, chocolate Oreo, black sesame and cinnamon sugar. Some of the seasonal flavors available on a recent visit included tiramisu crème brûlée and a bright blue lychee doughnut topped with Fruity Pebbles.
The bite: The standout flavor here is the strawberry mochi doughnut ($3), which is topped with a vibrant pink glaze and freeze-dried strawberry powder, adding tangy, fruity flavor to each chewy mochi bite. These doughnuts’ signature circle-of-bubbles shape makes them easy to share, too.
Good to know: Mochiholic also offers boba and crème brûlée, plus a mochi mix to make at home.
The details: Open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily at 4233 Rosewood Drive, Suite 9, in Pleasanton; mochiholic.com.
Chuck’s Donuts, Redwood City and Belmont
Walk through the doors of this Redwood City standby on Woodside Road any time of day — it’s open 24/7 — and despite the shop’s humble exterior, the place exudes a sense of abundance. Stacks of pink pastry boxes are piled to the ceiling, future take-away homes for the layers of glistening frosted doughnuts packed inside towering display cases. And an entire wall is devoted to happy customers, whose smiling faces and frosted grins peek out from photos pinned up over the years.
The bite: We loved the crème brûlée custard-filled doughnut with the torched sugar on top. A symphony of textures, it marries crispiness, fluffiness and creaminess in each bite.
Good to know: Chuck’s is cash only.
The details: Open 24/7 at 801 Woodside Road in Redwood City and 641 Ralston Ave. in Belmont.
Donut Farm, Oakland
Is there something about the restrictions of a vegan diet that makes people crave flavor? That would explain Donut Farm, whose doughnuts are potent sugar-bombs in zingy tastes like Orange Creamsicle and Lavender Earl Grey.
Donut Farm was started by music scenester and activist Josh Levine – he’s a founding member of Berkeley’s punk club 924 Gilman Street – and it dabbles in a wide variety of things, including feeding the homeless with vegan burritos. Still, the all-organic, vegan doughnuts are the main attraction, and they come in a rainbow of colors priced from $3 to $4 “top-shelf” confections.
The basic formula is a cake doughnut that’s slathered in a thick layer of intense glaze, with an interior that’s both dense and pleasantly chewy. When you order a blueberry doughnut, you are getting the full force of what feels like hundreds of compressed blueberries. Yeast-raised doughnuts and apple fritters are available Friday to Sunday. Just know that they’re extremely popular and usually sell out before 11 a.m.
Coffee aficionados will appreciate that the beans come from Oakland’s family-run McLaughlin Coffee Company. And there’s a bustling vegan brunch on Saturdays and Sundays, where diners can try herbed doughnuts smothered in shiitake-thyme gravy with Southern greens.
The bite: The maple is a good and full flavored version of the classic. If you want a more subtle, less-sweet bite go for the Vanilla Cookie or just the Plain Cake – it sounds like a cliché, but you really won’t be able to tell it’s vegan.
Good to know: The folks at Donut Farm also run the Coffee Conscious cafe in North Berkeley, which prepares other vegan pastries like scones and yam rolls.
Details: Open 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends at 6037 San Pablo Ave., Oakland; vegandonut.farm
Third Culture Bakery, Walnut Creek and elsewhere
Third Culture’s claim to fame is its Original Mochi Muffin, a crunchy/chewy confection made from pandan and coconut milk. But its butter-mochi doughnuts are danged good, too. They’re lightly chewy discoids that shine with the flavors of seasonal fruit and – if you’re lucky enough to snag it before it sells out – a black glaze that requires 72 hours of stone-milling Japanese sesame.
Founders and real-life partners Sam Butarbutar and Wenter Shyu started Third Culture to pay homage to the flavors of their childhoods in Indonesia and Taiwan. Ingredients are sourced for maximum deliciousness. Mochiko sweet-rice flour comes from Koda Farms, reputedly the oldest California rice producer (begun by the descendent of a samurai), and the dough incorporates local milk and French-style butter. The doughnuts are baked, rather than fried, resulting in a nicely dense but springy cake with a central indentation that collects pools of delicious glaze.
The chefs stay on top of the trends, so you might spot a salted egg-yolk mochi doughnut with a sweet-and-savory yellow dust ($3.35). Half the fun is deciding which flavor to go for – guava cheesecake, mango-passion fruit, jasmine milk tea? – and then veering into a totally different direction, like picking up mochi-banana bread pudding with intense chocolate and coconut flavors ($6.25).
The bite: Get the black sesame if you can; anything that takes 72 hours to prepare is usually worth it. And the fruit versions are a delight, with standouts being Strawberry Cream and Raspberry Lychee.
Good to know: There’s a serious matcha program at Third Culture, with sencha green tea leaves sourced from Kyoto. It’s hand-whisked and served up as lattes and sparkling fruit infusions.
Details: Open 9 a.m.-4 p.m. daily at 1310 S. California Blvd., Walnut Creek (other locations in Berkeley and San Francisco); thirdculturebakery.com/
SoDo Donuts, various pop-up locations
With sourdough pizza, sourdough beer and sourdough ice cream already floating around in the Bay Area, it was just a matter of time before someone threw doughnuts into the bacterial pantheon.
Know what? It totally works. Pastry chef Elle Cowan’s SoDo Donuts – a pop-up with her friends – claims to be the first place here doing sourdough doughnuts, but given their deliciousness it’ll likely have competitors. The dough is slow-fermented and pampered for three days before being tossed into hot rice-bran oil, creating fried orbs with a bubbly top, funky tang and the buttery goodness of a Parker House roll.
Most of the doughnuts have a not-too-sweet filling. Locally sourced ingredients include dairy from Straus Family Creamery, double-yolk eggs from Johnson Farms in Briones and fruits and flowers from the chef’s own garden. Flavors change with the season, so during summer you might find perfectly ripe peaches and cream, and in the fall, pumpkin custard with toasted nuts and cinnamon cream.
The traditional apple fritter sometimes appears as a green-mango fritter with salted-coconut glaze. For a left turn, definitely try one of the savory doughnuts – the filled red pepper and chevre is exceptional, and you can top it with an optional, fatty curl of prosciutto.
The bite: The Burnt Honey Cream doughnut combines caramelized honey cream with whipped mascarpone. It comes with a hat of housemade honeycomb sponge candy, which slowly melts over the doughnut to provide absolute honey decadence ($5).
Good to know: They can sell out, so it’s best to put a preorder in the day before the pop-up.
Details: For pop-up locations, hours and current menu check sododonuts.com or instagram.com/SoDoDonuts
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Vegan Bistro Donuts, San Jose and Oakland
Thanks to downtown San Jose happenings, the Vegan Bistro at 10th and Santa Clara streets has found new fans — both vegan and non-vegan — for their doughnuts. It seems you can only run, bicycle or drive by so many times before you decide you have to stop and give their goodies a try.
That makes an early arrival important for customers. Trays and trays of doughnuts have been known to sell out within three hours at this shop opened by owner Viet Hua a few years after his first one, in Oakland.
Regular South Bay customer Sandra Moran, who favors the sprinkle-covered cake doughnuts ($3.50) but tries all the other varieties, is happy to see the word get out about the bistro’s doughnuts. “This is by far my favorite place,” she said, adding that “they were my biggest craving when I was pregnant. My children love them.”
The bite: One top seller is a takeoff on Boston cream pie, a chocolate-frosted doughnut with an appealing texture and custard filling ($4). There’s also a maple-frosted version. The old-fashioned ($4), baked on weekends only, comes in vanilla, chocolate and blueberry flavors, and those are popular too.
Good to know: The vegan Vietnamese iced coffee ($6) and Thai iced tea ($6) are made fresh daily at the shop. Only organic fruit is used in the smoothies ($5.50 to $6).
The details: Open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday-Sunday at both 449 E. Santa Clara St., San Jose, and 411 E. 18th St., Oakland, with the possibility of expanded days of business soon, Hua said.
Dream Fluff Donuts, Berkeley
Scoff all you want at Krispy Kreme being a chain – and one that now does a marketing crossover called a Scooby Dooby Doo Doughnut, of all things – but when you get a fresh one, it’s pretty much the standard by which all yeast-raised doughnuts should be judged.
Dream Fluff Donuts is the rare establishment in the Bay that meets or perhaps exceeds that glazed standard. Its yeast doughnuts are light and fluffy, perfectly sweet and tear apart in your hand like fresh Hawaiian bread – you might actually tear into two or three before you’re able to restrain yourself.
The Cambodian family-run Dream Fluff is a classic doughnut shop in all the right ways. First off, it opens at the ambitious hour of 4 a.m. The selection is vast – you got your old-fashioned, cake, jelly-filled, bars, crullers and fritters – and cheap, starting at $1.75 (though a single hole is 35 cents). They’re not afraid to experiment, evident in breakfast-cereal and bacon-topped doughnuts. And then there are the special touches like perpetually steaming coffee, scratch-off lotto tickets and random kitchen specials like a 12-ounce cup of tater tots for $4.50.
The bite: The yeast-raised doughnuts are excellent renditions of the classic style; get them sugar- or chocolate-glazed. Folks who love big portions should also try the maple bars and the cinnamon rolls, both of which have the size and heft of home-building materials.
Good to know: The kitchen puts out solid and affordable breakfast fare like egg-and-cheese croissants, English-muffin sandwiches and short stacks of pancakes with bacon and eggs.
Details: Open 4 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday, 6 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday and 6 a.m.-1 p.m. Sunday at 2637 Ashby Ave., Berkeley; dreamfluffdonuts.wixsite.com/home.
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