The Many Lives
of a Sufganiyah:
Celebrating Doughnut Diversity
for Chanukah
“G SASHA ROGELBERG | JE STAFF
efüllte krapfen” isn’t exactly a German phrase that whets one’s appetite.

In fact, the Hebrew “sufganiyot” rolls off the tongue much more smoothly.

But each word conjures the same culinary meaning: enriched dough stuff ed
generously with fi lling and fried to golden-brown perfection.

Around this time of year, whatever you call these fried confections, consuming them
is a mitzvah, their hot oil bath representative of the oil that sustained the lit menorah for
eight days, instead of one.

With an abundance of names for fried fritters comes an abundance of variations, each
with its own history.

Th e ideal sufganiyot, according to Philadelphia-based food writer Aliza Green, is fried
in fresh, clean oil, yielding a puff ed, yeasted dough that is both light and airy but with a
chew. “It’s kind of contradictory, but that’s what makes it really delicious,” she said.

U.S. Jews are mostly purists when it comes to sufganiyot, Green said, preferring classic
fl avors year aft er year. She enjoys the fried bread’s richness cut with the acidity of straw-
berry or raspberry jam, as is traditionally found in U.S. bakeries through the month of
Kislev. Th ough a familiar confection in the U.S., jelly doughnuts emigrated — as many Jews
did — from Germany and Poland, where a more savory and lean dough (sugar and milk
were too expensive to use for an enriched dough) was stuff ed with meat, fi sh, mushrooms
or cheese, Gil Marks wrote in “Th e Encyclopedia of Jewish Food.” In Polish, they were
called paczka or paczki; in Yiddish, they were ponchik or pontshke.

18 NOVEMBER 25, 2021
WINTER HOLIDAY MAGAZINE
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM