Bomboloni (Italian doughnuts)

Bomboloni are Italian doughnuts, popular in Florence. These are more doughnut holes than doughnuts, filled with vanilla pastry cream, raspberry jam, or other fillings. The Italian “bomboloni” has been compared to the French “beignet” and the German “bismark” or “bismarck.”
 
In 1996, the Osteria del Circo on West 55th Street in Manhattan began serving bomboloni. Many other New York City restaurants, bakeries, and food trucks have offered bomboloni. Some food critics consider bomboloni to be New York City’s best doughnuts.
 
   
Food Network
Bomboloni
Recipe courtesy Jacques Torres, Dessert Circus At Home, 1999
Show: Passion for Dessert with Jacques Torres
Episode: Doughnuts
Ingredients
Scant 1/4 cup loosely packed fresh compressed yeast
Scant 1/4 cup cold water
3 1/2 cups bread flour
4 large eggs
1/3 cup granulated sugar, plus extra for coating
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed
Vegetable or canola oil
Raspberry jam (...)
 
The Art of Cookery
Bomboloni (Doughnuts)
Preparation time: 30 minutes.
Standing time for the dough: 3 hours.
Cooking time: 15 minutes.
25g dried yeast
200g milk
100g sugar
Salt
500g plain white flour
One lemon
2 teaspoons vanilla flavouring
80g butter
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt.
 
Put the dried yeast, warmed milk, half of the sugar and a pinch of salt into a bowl and mix together carefully with a wooden spoon. Transfer to a baking bowl and add the sifted flour; grated rind of half the lemon, vanilla and the melted butter.
 
Work the dough well until smooth and elastic. Cover and leave to rise in a warm place for two hours.
 
Roll the dough out to a thickness of about one centimetre; use a glass to cut out rounds about five centimetres in diameter. Gather up the remaining pieces, roll out and cut more rounds until you have used up all the dough. Cover with a cloth and leave to rise a further hour. Fry in plenty of hot oil, turning until golden on both sides. Remove the doughnuts one by one, drain on kitchen paper and sprinkle with the sugar.
 
If you like, you can fill them with jam, confectioner’s custard or chocolate cream.
     
Google Books
Journey Into the Self:
Being the Letters, Papers & Journals of Leo Stein
By Leo Stein
Edited by Edmund Fuller
New York, NY: Crown Publishers
1950
Pg. 227:
With the last Bomboloni I was just full.
     
Google Books
Florence
By Edmond René Labande and Janet Hamilton
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Book Co.
1951
Pg. 179:
... the air is redolent of the olive oil used for frying bomboloni, a kind of jam pancake, which is the Florentine equivalent of the British fish and chips, ...
 
Google Books
The Naked Streets
By Vasco Pratolini
New York, NY: A.A. Wyn
1952
Pg. 67:
The Bar San Piero has taken off its glass door. The round tray containing sugar-coated bomboloni, fragrant with vanilla, has been moved outdoors.
   
Google Books
The Silver Cricket
By Joy De Weese Wehen
Published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce
1966
Pg. 128:
... salami and liver paste, cheese, beans in olive oil, sliced salt ham with fresh figs, chocolate cake, and half a dozen bomboloni — jam doughnuts.
     
Google Books
Birnbaum’s Florence 1992
By Stephen Birnbaum and Alexandra Mayes Birnbaum
Nw York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers
1991
Pg. 173:
Or opt for freshly made doughnuts (bomboloni) at Luisa (50r Via Sant’Antonino), a shop that specializes in all kinds of fried fantasies, including polenta ... 
         
New York (NY) Times
Diner’s Journal
By RUTH REICHL
Published: January 12, 1996
(...)
“Don’t miss dessert,” the man two tables away confides. “They’re really delicious.” And so they are, especially bomboloni, miniature jelly doughnuts filled with chocolate, vanilla and raspberry and served with a circus flair.
 
“Gee,” he says wistfully, “do you think they’d deliver these to my office?”
 
Osteria del Circo, 120 West 55th Street, Manhattan, (212) 265-3636. Lunch entrees $12 to $25; dinner entrees $14 to $27.
   
Google Books
The Mini Midrash and a Maaseh:
An Anthology of Insights and Commentaries for Youngsters on the Weekly Torah Reading: Including Stories and Illustrations
By Hanoch Teller
Published by Feldheim Publishers
1998
Pg. 201:
“Italian food is what you want? Then Italian is what you get! It’s worth a ride down to TriBeCa just to get a bite out of Piatto’s pork loin with cannelloni, garlic, and orecchiette with broccoli di rabe and pignoli. But the best is yet to come: they got these Italian doughnuts called bomboloni, pumped up with vanilla, chocolate and raspberry — “
 
Google Books
In an Unrelated Story:
A Compelling Collection of Newsworthy Tales
By Hanoch Teller
Published by Feldheim Publishers
1999
Pg. 126:
The chef cooked up an array of original dishes that not only mixed cuisines in the very same dish, but resulted in some oxymoronic and outlandish servings such as “Angry Lobster’ (the crustacean served with sahved fennel and grana-cheese crisps sauteed in Tabasco sauce), “drunken doughnuts” (bomboloni pumped up with vanilla, chocolate, and raspberry-flavored bourbon),...
 
11 August 1999, New York (NY) TImes, “Epiphany of the Jelly Doughnut” by Florence Fabricant, pg. F2:
With bomboloni at Le Cirque 2000, minature lemon doughnuts at Cello, anise doughnuts with dulce de leche ice cream at Bolivar or Thomas Keller’s whimsical “doughnuts and coffee” dessert at the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., doughnuts are sneaking into high-end places.
           
New York (NY) Times
October 18, 2000
Doughnuts: In Search of Perfection in the Round
By AMANDA HESSER
(...)
IL FORNO, 400 West 50th Street. Bomboloni as puffy as throw pillows, and almost as big. A tender dough, crispy on the outside, with a generous stuffing of fresh, eggy custard. Delicious, but they may sink you. Plain doughnuts make a lighter alternative. Bomboloni, $1.75; plain doughnuts, $1.50.
 
OSTERIA DEL CIRCO, 120 West 55th Street. Little round bomboloni filled with jelly, chocolate or pastry cream are served at the bar. The dough is incredibly light, with the thin, crisp crust a touch oily, but pleasantly so. Three for $9.
 
New York (NY) Daily News   
TIME TO EAT THE DOUGHNUTS. These little ‘puffs’ are pure delight
BY ROSEMARY BLACK
Sunday, May 29th 2005, 2:11AM
Bomboloni - it’s a fun name to say out loud and a fun dessert to serve to kids of all ages. At Spigolo, on the upper East Side, pastry chef Heather Fratangelo prepares them by the dozen, then rolls them in ­sugar to serve warm. She offers them with caramel ice cream topped with espresso, but they’d be great with just a cup of coffee or tea. Naturally, they’re best eaten right away!
 
BOMBOLONI
Serves 4

6 tablespoons butter
1 cup water
2 eggs
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
4 teaspoons fresh yeast
4 teaspoons milk
Flour for the work surface
Vegetable oil for deep-frying
Sugar for rolling the doughnuts (...)
 
Google Books
Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics
By Kees Versteegh, Mushira Eid, Alaa Elgibali
Published by Brill
2006
Item notes: 4-vol. set
Item notes: v.2
Pg. 458:
Some Italian plurals are taken in a collective sense, as Tunisian bambaluni <

bomboloni [pl.] “a kind of pancake”...
   
New York (NY) Post
DOUGHING NUTS
FINDING THE WORLD’S BEST FRITTERS IN N.Y.C.
By ANDREA STRONG
March 4, 2007
(...)
ITALY’S BOMBOLONI AND FRATI
Italy’s answer to the doughnut comes in two versions - the bomboloni and the frati. Bomboloni are sugary fried balls of dough similar to the French beignet, and are being served at the newly opened Caffe Falai (265 Lafayette St.; [917] 338-6207). Chef Iacopo Falai’s sugared bomboloni - the size of tangerines - come swollen with your choice of vanilla pastry cream or raspberry jam ($2 each).
 
At A Voce (41 Madison Ave.; [212] 545-8555), pastry chef April Robinson’s bomboloni ($11) are filling-free, served with a chocolate dipping sauce. But at Morandi (211 Waverly Place; [212] 627-7575), Keith McNally’s new Italian outpost, chef Jody Williams serves frati luchese ($5) - twisted doughnuts she discovered in the Lucca region of Tuscany. After one bite of these anise-scented, sugar-sprinkled pieces of heaven, Krispy Kreme’s classic will be long forgotten.
 
Cooking With The Single Guy
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Bomboloni Part Deux: Raspberry and Chocolate
I’m still eating my way through the four flavors of my new favorite pastry treat: the bomboloni at Boriana’s Corner at the Ferry Building Plaza in San Francisco. It’s this Italian doughnut that doesn’t have a hole but is filled with a nice treat, pretty much like a jelly doughnut. I’ve already had the custard, which I love. In the last few weeks, I’ve also tried the raspberry (above) and the chocolate (below), which they call cioccolato.
 
The raspberry was nice, but it actually just tasted like a jelly doughnut. There wasn’t as much filling as the custard, but maybe it’s because raspberry can be tart and you don’t want too much of that. The chocolate was better. It tasted like bitter chocolate, with a thick texture, not as creamy as the custard. Chocolate-lovers will probably like this more than the custard, but I have to say the custard is still my all-time favorite. It has a lot of filling and it’s so creamy and tasty. If you like custard like me, you’ll be going on and on about it too!
   
Erica De Mane
Lost Recipes Found: Regina’s Puglian Doughnuts
January 20, 2008 by Erica
(...)
And then there are bomboloni of Florence, which are fashioned like doughnut holes. The dough for them is more like an American doughnut in texture than is, say, a zeppole, which is essentially pizza dough. Zeppole is what is classically thought of as the Southern Italian doughnut, but Regina says her mother doesn’t think the one she remembers had that kind of texture.
       
Kitchen Kat 
Saturday, January 26, 2008
A Brief History of Doughnuts
(...)
Italy
Italian doughnuts are called ciambelle, krafen, zeppoli or bomboloni.
(Bomboloni are just like Bismarks—my favorite!) 
     
Some Like It Haute
Monday, May 26
Caffe Falai, New York City
(...)
Apparently Caffe Falai’s bombolonis are quite the bomb too. Bomboloni? Why isn’t that the cutest loveliest Bambi-large-wondering-eyes confectionary word you’ve heard? A grenade-size, sugar-coated Italian doughnut hole, stuffed with either raspberry jelly or custard… I guess this would resonate with those who always thought doughnut holes were a waste of precious (“my preciousss” - couldn’t resist, sorry) space and should ideally be filled with something… or anything! 
 
Serious Eats - New York
Sugar Rush: Sullivan St. Bakery’s Bomboloni
Posted by Ed Levine, June 2, 2008 at 5:30 PM
In New York magazine’s “Best Breakfast Meals” list, Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite called the bombolinis at Jim Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery the “best doughnuts” in the city. That is a powerful claim, so we bought a bunch to taste to see if it was accurate. After the first bite, we found it hard to disagree. The dough is impossibly light, the outer crust is crisp yet pliant, and the filling is so creamy and vanilla-y it tastes like great vanilla ice cream. After the second bite, we have decided to up the ante and call it the best filled doughnut we’ve ever had. After the third bite, we decided that we are simply not worthy of this most excellent doughnut.
Sullivan Street Bakery
533 West 47th Street, New York NY 10036 (Tenth/Eleventh; map)
212-265-5580

Serious Eats - New York
A Guide to the Best Doughnuts in New York
Posted by Kathy YL Chan, October 21, 2008 at 10:00 AM
(...)
Best Bomboloni (Tie)
Caffe Falai
You must be careful when you eat the bomboloni at Caffe Falai. I wasn’t—and suffered indeed when a rather tasty blob of chantilly squirted out with much force, straight onto my nose. Carelessness aside, the bombolini here are light and delicate, bordering on whimsical. They come stuffed with four various flavors, including chocolate and vanilla crème, but our favorites were the chantilly and a chunky strawberry jam one. 265 Lafayette Street, New York NY 10012; 212-274-8615
Sullivan Street Bakery
Over at Sullivan Street Bakery in Hell’s Kitchen, the bomboloni, are filled with either vanilla pastry cream or raspberry jam, but are of an entirely different breed. They are just as adept at satisfying a hunger for sweet fried dough but exhibit a greater body and substance with dough more akin to bread than a light pastry. Deep-fried to a crisp dark brown before getting generous shakes of confectioners’ sugar, they stay perfectly crisp at room temperature. We prefer the pastry cream to the jam, for no other reason than we simply can’t get enough of the pure vanilla flavor and luxurious mouthfeel of the bean-speckled filling. 533 West 47th Street, New York NY 10036; 212-265-5580
 
Serious Eats - New York
Sugar Rush: Bomboloni Are Back at the Dessert Truck
Posted by Robyn Lee, November 13, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Last fall the Dessert Truck sold bomboloni—deep-fried vanilla pastry cream-filled brioche balls dusted with cinnamon and sugar—and now they’re back! Co-founder Chris Chen says, “This is my favorite dessert!! Only a handful of restaurants serve this dessert, as each bomboloni ball is rolled out by hand, set out to rise, and then fried and filled individually.”