Feature: Krispy Kreme Olden Days Donut Making Exhibit

In the lobby of Krispy Kreme's mix plant is a couple of knick knacks used to make donuts back in the olden days. Before they ever had a donut hopper to pop out rings of dough, they had this weird metal roller (shown above). It's a donut roller! I didn't pick it up but it looks pretty heavy, no?

Like bread, yeast-raised donuts need to be proofed before frying. After being cut, donuts have to go in a proof box. Back in the day, Krispy Kreme made and used wooden proof boxes like this:

It's not too different nowadays, except everything is sterile metal nowadays and with Krispy Kreme's automated donut production, columns of racks convey the donuts in a zig zag through the proof box.

The last bit of donut making devices that Krispy Kreme had on display was the one I would have most liked to see in action. It's one of the earliest automated donut machines, the Ring King Jr.!

It would have been really neat if they had this running during the summit as I was really curious to see it in action.

I was able to find this video from the Smithsonian where you can kind of get an idea of how it goes (the Smithsonian has a Ring King Jr. in their collection warehoused somewhere):


From what I gather, the dough goes up top in the bowl/hopper:

And then is extruded into the oil below and then travels in a circle as it cooks and then is pushed out.

There used to be one of these in every Krispy Kreme back in the 1950s. They used to pop out 70 donuts an hour. Pretty neat!