The cronut has come to Baltimore. Or, at least, the doughssant has. A metaphorical and physical portmanteau of doughnut and croissant, the doughssant is a delicious hybrid between the two pastries. It has flaky, buttery, laminated dough like a croissant, but is fried like a doughnut. Sound amazing? It is, but you better be prepared to go to some lengths to get one.
At B. Doughnut, Baltimore’s very own artificially scarce doughnut shop, the early bird gets the worm. You’ll have to get up early if you want to get one of their specialty products like the doughssant or everything-bagel-with-lox doughnut (more on that later).
How early? I went at 9:15 a.m. on a Sunday and they had already run out of doughssants. Their stated closing time is 1 p.m. but they post on their Facebook page when they run out of doughnuts. Once they’re out, that’s it for the day. Most weekends they post by about 11 a.m., so it’s hard to get your beauty rest if you want some of these. However, with the best doughnuts in miles, B. Doughnut is worth a few hours of missed sleep.
B. Doughnut challenges the definition of doughnut. Their pastries are not shaped the way you would expect a doughnut to be shaped. With the exception of doughssants, their doughnuts tend to have the holes filled in.
I suspect this decision was to allow more room for filling, an area where B. Doughnut excels. The classics include vanilla bean, lemon curd or berry jam filling, and B. Doughnut rotates new fillings daily. When I went apple cinnamon was on the menu to celebrate the beginning of autumn. For purists, there are unfilled options. And If you’re not in the mood for a sweets, B. Doughnut proposes that an everything bagel can be a doughnut flavor too.
I was feeling adventurous so I got the everything-bagel-with-chive doughnut and an unfilled chocolate frosted doughnut to set a baseline. The base dough tastes closer to that of Krispy Kreme than it does to Dunkin’ Doughnuts.
It is surprisingly light for a doughnut and by itself is not particularly sweet. The crust is just barely on the line between soft and crisp. The everything bagel doughnut was filled with cream cheese and plentifully coated with poppy seed, sesame seed and garlic powder.
It tasted surprisingly good, but was too salty for my sleepy tastebuds. I wish I could have gotten the one with lox, as I think that would have cut the saltiness a bit but alas I was too late and they had already ran out by 9:15. The chocolate frosted doughnut was everything anyone could wish for in a pastry with generous and authentically chocolatey frosting. Although I wasn’t able to snag a doughssant on this visit, I got my hands on one a few months ago and it was sublime, easily worth waking up an hour even earlier for.
B. Doughnut is located in Hampden at 3528 Chestnut Ave., about a 20 minute walk from campus. A bike ride takes about 10-15 minutes. If you need to get some studying done early on a weekend, you can make the whole experience a lot more pleasant by starting with a trip to B. Doughnut.
