Maple Bacon Donut — maple-glazed yeast doughnut with crisp bacon

i. Origin & history

Both halves of the doughnut were familiar long before they met. The maple bar — an oblong raised doughnut, also called a long john, glazed with maple icing — has been a staple of doughnut shops on the US West Coast and in the Midwest for decades. And bacon with maple syrup is a standard North American breakfast plate, poured over pancakes or waffles; the pairing of salty cured pork and maple sweetness was already deeply familiar.

Putting the bacon on top of the doughnut is generally credited to Voodoo Doughnut, which opened in Portland, Oregon in 2003 and built its reputation on irreverent, extravagant doughnuts. Its Bacon Maple Bar — a maple-frosted long john with two whole strips of bacon laid along the top — became the shop's signature and was much photographed and written about through the late 2000s, at the height of a broader American enthusiasm for bacon in sweets.

From there the idea spread to independent bakeries and chains across North America, usually as a ring doughnut sprinkled with chopped bacon rather than whole strips. It now sits alongside the cronut and other 'gourmet' doughnuts as part of the craft-doughnut wave of the 2010s, and maple bacon flavours have migrated into cupcakes, ice cream and popcorn.

The spelling 'donut' is the informal American form, popularised by twentieth-century chains; 'doughnut' remains standard in British English and in formal American usage. Both describe the same fried dough, and on this site you will find the classic glazed version under donuts.

ii. Why sweet, salt and smoke work together

A plain maple-glazed doughnut is very sweet and fairly one-note. Bacon adds three things the doughnut lacks: salt, which suppresses bitterness and makes sweet flavours taste rounder and more intense; smoke, whose aromatic compounds echo the caramel and woody notes in maple syrup; and crunch, a hard, brittle contrast to the soft crumb and tacky glaze. The same logic explains salted caramel and chocolate-covered pretzels.

For that to work, the bacon has to be truly crisp. Chewy, fatty bacon is unpleasant on a sweet doughnut and goes rubbery as it cools. Baking it on a rack in a hot oven renders the fat evenly and dries the strips into flat, brittle pieces that stay crisp for hours. A light dusting of brown sugar before baking candies the surface and makes the bacon even crisper — useful if the doughnuts will sit for a while.

The glaze needs real maple syrup and enough body to hold the bacon. Maple syrup alone is too thin and too subtle in flavour once mixed with icing sugar, so the glaze is boiled down slightly with a little butter, or reinforced with a few drops of maple extract. It should be thick enough to coat a spoon opaquely; the bacon is pressed in while it is still wet so that it sets in place.

Underneath, the doughnut is a rich yeast dough with milk, egg and butter. Frying at 175 °C is the key number: hotter and the outside browns before the centre cooks; cooler and the dough absorbs oil and turns greasy. A properly fried raised doughnut has a pale ring around its middle where it floated above the oil — the sign of a light, well-proved dough.

iii. Ingredients

Makes 12 servings · scroll the side panel to adjust

• 500 g strong white bread flour
• 60 g caster sugar
• 7 g instant yeast
• 8 g fine salt
• 250 ml whole milk, lukewarm
• 2 eggs
• 60 g unsalted butter, softened
• 1500 ml sunflower or rapeseed oil, for frying
• 12 rashers smoked streaky bacon
• 1 tbsp light brown sugar, optional, for the bacon
• 120 ml pure maple syrup
• 30 g unsalted butter, for the glaze
• 250 g icing sugar, sifted
• 2 tbsp milk or cream, as needed
• ¼ tsp maple extract, optional

Strong bread flour gives the dough enough gluten to rise high and hold a light, chewy crumb; plain flour works but gives a softer, more cakey doughnut. Use smoked streaky bacon (American-style), which crisps far better than lean back bacon. Pure maple syrup is essential — 'pancake syrup' is flavoured corn syrup and tastes flat; darker, more robust grades give the strongest maple flavour in the glaze. A neutral frying oil with a high smoke point — sunflower, rapeseed or groundnut — keeps the flavour clean.

iv. Method

1. Mix the flour, sugar, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Add the warm milk and eggs and mix to a shaggy dough, then knead for 8–10 minutes by hand (5 in a mixer), working in the softened butter a little at a time, until smooth, elastic and slightly tacky. Cover and leave to rise in a warm place for 1–1½ hours, until doubled.
2. Meanwhile cook the bacon: lay the rashers on a rack over a lined tray, sprinkle with brown sugar if using, and bake at 200 °C (400 °F) for 15–20 minutes, until deep golden and crisp. Drain on kitchen paper and cool; they will crisp further.
3. Knock back the dough and roll it out 1.5 cm thick. Cut into 12 rectangles about 12 × 5 cm for maple bars, or stamp out rings with a 9 cm cutter. Set on squares of floured baking paper, cover loosely and prove for 30–45 minutes, until puffy and a fingertip leaves a slow-springing dent.
4. Heat the oil in a deep, heavy pan to 175 °C (350 °F). Fry 2–3 doughnuts at a time, lowering them in on their paper (remove the paper with tongs), for 60–90 seconds per side until deep golden. Drain on a rack and cool for at least 15 minutes.
5. For the glaze, simmer the maple syrup and butter together for 2 minutes. Off the heat, whisk in the icing sugar, maple extract if using and enough milk to make a thick, smooth glaze that coats a spoon opaquely.
6. Dip the top of each doughnut into the warm glaze, letting the excess drip off. While the glaze is still wet, lay a whole rasher along each bar, or press chopped bacon onto ring doughnuts.
7. Leave for 15 minutes for the glaze to set before serving.

v. Tips & common mistakes

• Bake the bacon on a rack. Oven-baking renders fat evenly and gives flat, brittle rashers; pan-fried bacon curls and often stays chewy in places.
• Hold the oil at 175 °C. Use a thermometer and fry only a few at a time. Too cool and the doughnuts soak up oil; too hot and they burn outside while staying doughy within.
• Do not over-prove. Over-proved dough collapses when lifted and fries flat and greasy. Fry when a gentle press springs back slowly.
• Reduce the maple syrup. Simmering it briefly with butter concentrates its flavour so the glaze tastes clearly of maple rather than just sugar.
• Glaze when cool, top while wet. Warm doughnuts make the glaze run off; the bacon must go on before the glaze sets or it will not stick.
• Add bacon on the day. Even crisp bacon softens slowly on a moist glaze, so top the doughnuts within a few hours of serving.

vi. Variations

The bacon maple bar, with whole rashers on a long john, is the Voodoo-style original. Maple bacon rings use chopped bacon on a standard ring doughnut. Candied-bacon versions coat the rashers in brown sugar and black pepper before baking. A brown-butter maple glaze adds a nutty depth, and some bakeries use a maple cake doughnut base instead of a yeast one. For a meat-free version, swap the bacon for toasted pecans — the same move as in maple pecan pancakes.

Other fried-dough cousins on DessertCat include Germany's jam-filled Berliner, the Dutch oliebollen, the molten-centred lava donut and the doughnut ice cream cone.

vii. Serving & storage

Maple bacon doughnuts are a breakfast or brunch treat as much as a dessert, best with strong black coffee, whose bitterness balances the sweet glaze. Serve them within a few hours of frying, while the dough is soft and the bacon crisp.

They are best eaten the same day. Leftovers keep loosely covered at room temperature for up to 1 day — longer than that and the dough stales and the bacon goes soft; because they contain cooked meat, refrigerate any you keep beyond that. Unglazed doughnuts freeze well for up to a month: thaw, warm briefly in a 150 °C oven for 5 minutes, then glaze and top with freshly crisped bacon. Bacon can be cooked a day ahead, refrigerated, and re-crisped in the oven for a few minutes.

ix. More from North American

• Donuts — classic glazed yeast doughnuts
• Lava Donut — doughnut with a molten centre
• Maple Pecan Pancakes — buttermilk stack with maple
• Cronut — croissant-doughnut hybrid
• Berliner — German jam doughnuts
• Freakshake — doughnut-topped loaded milkshake