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A Hole in One How do they get the jelly into doughnuts? Jessica Goldberg and Hadassah Lewis visit two popular bakeries to report on the Hanukka tradition of 'sufganiyot'. The hustle and bustle of Hanukka begins inside the bakeries, where workers are busy producing thousands of sufganiyot - the sweet, oily jelly doughnuts - that are imbued in Hanukka tradition and are so popular with all ages. Angel's Bakery in Kiryat Moshe, is at work around the clock during the eight days of Hanukka, when more than a quarter million doughnuts are prepared every 24 hours. The preparation of jam-filled and caramel-filled doughnuts begins a month before the holiday in a huge empty mixing bowl. Flour, sugar, and other special ingredients are poured into the bowl and kneaded by a metal mixing arm into 100 kilos of dough. Each batch will, when the process is finished, produce 1,600 doughnuts.
The cart is left in the fermentation box, a sort of pastry steam room where the sufganiyot-to-be are left to rise for an hour-and-a-half. The machine that turns the dough into doughnuts awaits. It has been heating the oil to 160 degrees Celsius. Row by row, the dough circles are floated along the frying carousel, turned over by a device like the spokes of a turning wheel, and allowed to continue frying to the end of the carousel. This frying process takes about nine minutes. After they are fried, the doughnuts are moved up a short ramp, at the top of which they are officially dubbed sufganiyot by injection of jelly. Next they are dropped down a ramp where a worker is waiting to box them and send them to the bake shop that is their destination. On the last night of Hanukka, Angel's sufganiyot machinery will be cleaned and covered, and put into hibernation until next year's Hanukka season. "The laundries always make good money off of us during Hanukka," Danny Angel, third generation of Angel's jokes about his sufganiyot, "because no matter how much care you take in eating them, you always end up a mess." The German Colony's Pe'er bakery also has doughnut-production down to a science, thanks to 28-year owner Moshe Sharavy. In one of the back rooms of the bakery sits a large black vat that holds up to 16 liters of olive oil kept over a hot fire. Meanwhile, a big machine mixes the flour, oil, eggs, sugar, and yeast together, creating a fine dough. A second machine with circular shapes embedded into its mold then cuts the dough into the shapes of the sufganiyot. The circles of dough are lowered into the oil vat to be fried and then are lifted out in metal holders. Once they are baked, they are injected with jelly; no hole is even apparent in the dough. Finally the workers sift the confection sugar over the tops of the doughnuts. The doughnuts are then ready to bring the festive holiday spirit to the noses and mouths of eager Jerusalemites.
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Now mixed, the dough goes into the dividing machine where it is sectioned into round balls and placed on trays. The trays are then wheeled by cart into the fermentation box.