Photos by Linda Campos

“Time to make the donuts,” says Fred the baker, played by Michael Vale, in the classic Dunkin’ Donuts advertisement. He’d wake up before sunrise to whip up a fresh batch. The commercial ran for 17 years before Vale retired. And during that time, Dunkin’ Donuts, with its coffee and muffins (and eventually bagels), came to rule the Massachusetts morning routine. Mom-and-pop donut shops largely disappeared. The donut became fast food: flat, stale and processed. It seemed we’d lost the specialty donut forever.

And then a revival happened. The slow-food movement of the mid-aughts gave the donut a much-deserved revamp. Artisan donut shops popped up across the country. And by 2015, the seeds of Worcester’s Glazy Susan donuts began to germinate when Joe and Susan Skrzek walked into one of these shops while visiting Los Angeles.

“We typically plan our trips around food,” Joe says, “and these donut places kept coming up.” They tried DK’s Donuts in Santa Monica first. It had opened in 1980 and yet it was still a novelty; the line stretched onto the sidewalk. It was the couple’s first experience with maple bacon and Fruity Pebbles donuts. It changed them: Artisan donuts were a thing.

“Every time we traveled, we ran into these donut places,” Joe says. They started to seek them out. They began to understand how the donuts were made and which shops used a pre-made mix and who made them from scratch. They came to understand the taste and feel of a real donut.

Joe experimented by making donuts at home, a difficult task. “There’s a reason people don’t make [donuts] at home,” he says. He honed his recipe and the couple launched their own business in 2018. They started working out of the Worcester Regional Food Hub kitchen, doing pop-ups in and around the city. They’d show up with donuts and sell out.

And for good reason: Glazy Susan’s donuts are an expression of what a donut should be. There’s a sweet, burnt-sugar taste that’s a little cotton-candy-meets- caramel. They’re light yet filling, airy and not puffy or marshmallowy. They’re made from a 24-hour-fermented brioche dough that bounces to the touch. And they have a monthly rotating menu of flavors like strawberry cheesecake, Thin Mint chocolate cake, pandan coconut and Vietnamese coffee, which is fitting because in 2020 they opened their own space at the corner of the DCU Center with the help of Tam Le’s Vietnamese coffee shop Reign Drink Lab.

Le, who owns restaurants in Worcester, Quincy and Dorchester, and the original Reign in Dorchester next to his parents’ Vietnamese restaurant, saw an opportunity to try the concept out in Worcester. He just needed a partner to handle food. And he found Joe and Susan, whose donuts paired perfectly with his drink shop idea. Now, they’re sharing their scratch-made donuts at Reign four days a week. But the pandemic has been difficult for Reign. The DCU Center is closed and the colleges nearby haven’t brought the expected foot traffic, so now Le is beginning the process of pulling the Reign brand out of Worcester. He’s struggled to keep everything afloat and he hasn’t been able to give Reign in Worcester the attention it deserves.

“Reign Drink Lab prides itself on not only quality, but also awesome service in a fun/energetic environment,” Le said in an email. “Not being able to deliver that in Worcester, [I’ve] decided it was best to come back to Boston to further develop Reign Drink Lab, soon to be Reign ca phe—ca phe is café in Vietnamese.”

Glazy Susan remains in the DCU Center space and on weekend mornings there’s a line to get in, even on a cold winter day. It moves quickly. The donuts look like little pieces of art on the counter and taste even better.

glazysusan.com

This story appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of Edible Boston and Edible Worcester.