a style · PAFastnacht Day in the Dutch counties
also: Pennsylvania Dutch fastnacht · Fasnacht Day
Pre-order by the dozen or do without.
One pastry, one day. Potato-dough donuts, square or diamond cut, fried for Shrove Tuesday and eaten with butter or golden syrup, sold by bakeries, churches, fire halls and — in eastern Pennsylvania — most chain supermarkets.
The story Cited · wp-fasnacht-doughnut
The fasnacht is a pantry-clearing food: lard, sugar, fat and butter used up before Lent. Lancaster, York, Lebanon and Berks counties keep it, and the day is known locally as Fastnacht Day rather than Shrove Tuesday. Parts of Maryland call them kinklings or kuechles, and bakeries there sell them only on that Tuesday.
Polish-American communities in the United States have largely moved pączki from the Thursday before to this same Tuesday, so in a city with both populations, one Tuesday carries two traditions and two arguments about which dough is better.
How it is done Tradition
Potato dough, risen overnight, rolled, cut in squares with a slit, fried in the morning.
Today Tradition
Volume is ordered ahead. A shop that guesses wrong on Fastnacht Day is wrong for a year.
The particulars
| state | PA |
|---|---|
| dough | potato |
| counter | donuts-only |
| region | Pennsylvania Dutch country |
| confidence | high · updated 2026-09-16 |
Who it runs with
Who talks about it
Where we got it
- Fasnacht (doughnut) — Wikipedia · link
Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.