- Luke Zahm: This week on Wisconsin Foodie: I thought we might take a little bit of a deep dive into one of my favorite snacks, the Glazer.

How long has Kwik Trip been making Glazers?

- Andy: I think it started already in 2012.

- Luke: Oh, man, these are gorgeous, Andy!

- Andy: Last year alone, we did 47 million Glazers.

- Knowing that all the Kwik Trips in the known universe are getting their doughnuts from this line right here, this feels like a point of pride for me as a true Wisconsinite.

Looking at something like Kwik Trip, in some communities, these convenience stores are an absolute lifeline.

Nothing more Midwestern than two dudes tailgating in a parking lot, splitting a six-pack of Glazers.

It's like eating a cloud.

- Just melts in your mouth.

- Luke: Glazer bread pudding with bananas, a little bit of bourbon caramel, is kind of unspeakably good.

Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.

[gentle music] - Did you know Organic Valley protects over 400,000 acres of organic farmland?

So are we an organic-food cooperative that protects land, or land conservationists who make delicious food?

Yes; yes, we are.

Organic Valley.

- Twenty-minute commutes.

Weekends on the lake.

Warm welcomes and exciting career opportunities.

Not to mention all the great food!

There's a lot to look forward to in Wisconsin.

Learn more at InWisconsin.com.

- Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993.

Just a short drive from Madison, come visit "Swissconsin" and see where your beer's made.

- We have one chance to do it right and not compromise the integrity of the products or the company because it's easier or cheaper or faster.

- The Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers are proud underwriters of Wisconsin Foodie.

It takes love of the land and generations of farming know-how to nurture a quality potato crop.

Ask any potato farmer and they'll tell you, there's a lot of satisfaction in healthy-grown crops.

- With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore.

From local animal sourcing to on-site, high-quality butchering and packaging, The Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically raised, grass-fed, and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers.

The Conscious Carnivore: Know your farmer, love your butcher.

- Also with the support of the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

[upbeat music] - Luke: We are a collection of the finest farmers, food producers, and chefs on the planet.

We are a merging of cultures and ideas, shaped by this land.

[sizzling] We are a gathering of the waters, and together, we shape a new identity to carry us into the future.

[glasses clinking] We are storytellers.

We are Wisconsin Foodie.

[upbeat music] One of the best parts of my job is I get to travel all over and taste some of the best foods that Wisconsin and the Midwest has to offer.

I get to meet the best farmers.

I get to hang out with the best chefs.

But as a crew, we eat at Kwik Trip constantly.

So today, I thought we might take a little bit of a deep dive into one of my favorite snacks.

Ha ha, the Glazer!

And today, I'm gonna go to the central bakery for all the Glazers in the United States in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

I think it's amazing that these all come out of one location and are distributed on the Upper Midwest every single day.

[upbeat music continues] I'm feeling good, man.

I'm feeling really excited.

I got my man Andy here.

We're about to go in and see the behind-the-scenes look at how Glazers, those delicious doughnuts that are so commonly associated with the Midwest, are made.

I can't wait, really.

- Andy Fuchs: All right!

- I'm speechless, which is rare for me.

- I'll take you kind of in the back side of our Glazer mixing room here.

This is where our Glazers get made.

Start from the very beginning up here.

So you're actually getting to see right at the beginning here of when we're loading up a bowl.

So...

This is an ice crusher.

He'll put the ice in while he's cutting bags and mixing.

- Luke: Why ice?

- Andy: Cool down the dough.

- Luke: Cool down the dough.

- Andy: Yep, yep.

Just looking for that certain temperature so when we hit that proof stage that it's proofed the way that we want it.

- Luke: Sure.

- This is our bowl lift.

So after a Glazer bowl gets done mixing, he'll shove it in, shut the gate, and lift it up.

And once it gets up there, it'll do a big dump and go on the conveyor into the big hopper over here.

So, each dough weighs about 400 pounds for the day.

And we'll chunk that, we call it chunking when it goes through the hopper into the Oscar.

Make about six bowls an hour on this end.

- Luke: Six bowls an hour?

So, that's 2,400 pounds-- a ton of Glazer dough.

- Andy: A ton.

Then it'll get, obviously go down through our hopper.

This is our extruder here, our Oscar, where it'll get the first preliminary bit of thickness here.

- Luke: Okay.

- Andy: So and then as the dough goes, you'll see that it'll gradually get thinner and thinner.

Then here's our cutter.

So this is where it's gonna get stamped out into those perfect-shaped circles.

And you can see that the actual middle is not missing yet.

It hits the air pistons here.

We got a bunch of fingers that just rapidly shoots out air quickly and expels these little, tiny pucks so when they come out the other side, perfect shape.

- Luke: Yeah.

- Andy: No middle, so... - Luke: How long has Kwik Trip been making Glazers?

- Andy: I think it started already in 2012, so... All right.

- Let's check out the proofing.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So obviously, the doughnuts, like I said, they go down the sheeter line here, where they're flipped onto trays.

These trays have sensors, so we know exactly the speed of the doughnuts coming in to when the tray is for them to flip onto 'em.

After they get flipped onto there, then they'll go into the proof box, which is about 35 minutes to get through.

You know, we're introducing that air and activating that yeast to make that doughnut light and airy when you're chewing on it.

- And that's one of the hallmark of Glazers is the fact that they're pillowy and airy.

- Yes, we want that airy pillow that melts in your mouth when you take a bite of it.

And now, as the doughnuts come out, they're flat, and they don't fry well, so they got no life to them.

- Nobody wants a glazed biscuit.

- Andy: No, no; no, we don't.

- Man, it smells awesome right here.

- Andy: They come out of the proof box.

They're all puffed up to where we want them to be, the shape, the temperature, and they take their fryer bath, so... - Oh, man, this is like the splash landing of the Glazer.

- Oh, yeah.

Getting ready for the bath.

Just right in there, and away they go.

They get to halfway through the fryer, and then they get a nice flip.

And that's where you're really starting to see what a Glazer is all about.

- Luke: Oh, man, these are gorgeous, Andy!

- Yeah, they flip really nicely.

And then they finish off the second half of the cook.

And we do about 39 cooks per minute here.

- Luke: How many of these bad boys is KT turning out on a year?

- Andy: Last year alone, we did 47 million Glazers.

- Luke: Forty-seven million?

Man, that's a lot of Glazers!

- Andy: Absolutely.

- All that beautiful yeasted dough goodness popping up.

It smells warm, it's comforting.

Like, it takes every bit of restraint that I have right now not to grab one of these puppies off and try it hot.

I won't do that.

- I was gonna say, then it's going to be a problem coming up here soon.

This is starting to get that smell of what makes a Glazer a Glazer.

And then we slowly get closer to our icer, where it really comes through.

- Luke: [laughs] I can't wait.

[Andy laughs] [both laugh] - So this is our liquefier, where we make all the glaze that actually goes on a Glazer and what makes a Glazer a Glazer, in my opinion.

- Luke: So, like, traditional bakeries, you know, you'd be talking, like, powdered sugar, water.

Are there any secret ingredients that the dining public should know about?

- We use a very nice vanilla.

[both laugh] - Vanilla?

Okay, great, I love it.

- Andy: So after the doughnuts get fried here and they're still nice and warm, they go through a glaze waterfall bath, and it just coats 'em completely.

With the excess, it just drips back off and gets recirculated to keep it warm so it just constantly coats the Glazers.

- Luke: ♪ This is Glazer waterfall ♪ This smells like heaven.

I mean, you've got that warm doughnut.

You got the yeasty goodness.

Now you add that little bit of vanilla, that sugary sweetness.

- Andy: Oh, yeah, with the light just shimmering off it?

This is my favorite part.

- Wow, man, oh, man.

To be right here next to the Glazer, knowing that all the Kwik Trips in the known universe are getting their doughnuts from this line right here, this specific line, feels like a point of pride for me as a true Wisconsinite.

But I can tell you, like, the smells in this joint are mouthwatering.

Honestly, if I could, like, open my mouth on that part of the line and just let 'em pile in, I would.

I'd be a very big man, but I would do it for you because this smells absolutely irresistible.

So are these ready to grab right off the line?

What happens next?

- Nope, so these are still very, very warm.

Still got that warm glaze on.

If you went to grab 'em right now, they'd just fall apart in your hand.

They're so soft and tender.

So what they gotta do is they gotta go through the spiral, which takes about 45 minutes to 50 minutes, to cool down properly so our coworkers can handle 'em at the packaging end.

- Luke: I mean, that seems like a really long time to let something that smells this good cool before you can finally handle it to maybe sneak one.

So we go all the way over here, all the way over the spiral?

- Andy: Yep, and then the conveyor that you see bringing 'em down are Glazers that are cooled enough to package coming down on this side.

Then, finally, the grand finale here, the six people on the line will fill the box by the time it gets to the end of it.

- Luke: Wow!

But I love the fact that there's like, a human touch here.

Is that by design?

- Andy: Absolutely.

That will always be a point of pride for Kwik Trip.

We want the human eye, the human element to be able to see that product and determine if it's good or not for our guests.

So that'll always be something that Kwik Trip strives to have going forward.

- Luke: Of course.

And that also, like, creates a tremendous amount of jobs.

- Andy: Absolutely.

- Luke: This is a lot of Glazers!

- Andy: Yeah!

[both laugh] So at what point in the process is it okay to snag a box so we can taste some of these bad boys?

- Why don't we go right after the metal detector right over here?

- Luke: Yeah, let's do it after the metal detector.

[both laugh] [quirky music] This is it?

This is the one?

- This is the one.

- Yeah!

Now, I won't do you dirty and try this on the production floor.

- No.

- We'll go to a safe facility to do that.

But I am super excited.

Man, we gotta eat these.

- Absolutely; let's go.

- Shall we?

- Yeah, let's do it.

- All right, all right, I can't wait.

Yeah!

Hi, Tashina.

- Hi, how are you?

- Good; glaze looks perfect.

- Thank you!

- Yeah!

[groovy music] - Oh, I'm so jacked right now.

I got my Glazers, I got my Karuba coffee.

It spilled all over my hand, just like I'm driving.

[Andy laughs] All right, my man, ooh.

Nothing more Midwestern than two dudes tailgating in a parking lot, splitting a six-pack of Glazers.

I feel like I watched this bad boy through your entire life cycle, from the mixing to the proofing to the frying, to the glazing, to the cooling, to the boxing.

Here we are.

Cheers.

- Cheers.

- Oh, my gosh, that's good.

It's like eating a cloud.

I get that pillowy goodness.

But the glaze, like, how it sets up.

And you can kinda see here where it's crystallized a little bit.

- Just melts in your mouth, smooth, that richness of the vanilla coming through.

- How many of these do you think you can take down?

- Probably could do, like, 20.

- You really think you could do 20 Glazers?

- Oh, yeah.

- My man, thank you for walking me through the life cycle of a Glazer.

Here's to next time.

It's a good doughnut.

- It is.

- Man, getting to hang out and see how the Glazers are made literally was eye-opening and delicious.

Getting to taste 'em straight off the line?

That's, like, unthinkable.

Nobody gets that opportunity.

I feel so lucky.

Today, I wanted to share with you a recipe that kind of came out of necessity.

A few years ago, I was running late for a family gathering, and as a chef, when you're running late for a family gathering, you gotta use all your resources to put something together.

I didn't just wanna show up with a box of Glazers, so I stopped at KT, and I put together Glazer bread pudding.

My lucky day.

I'll have you all know this is the first time I've ever used a cart at Kwik Trip, just because usually I'm the guy trying to hero it all up to the front with no basket, no cart.

I thought we'd do it a little bit more civilized.

So I'm gonna start with, let's say six, six boxes of Glazers.

We're gonna grab some whole milk, one dozen eggs.

Let's get some butter.

Now, today, I'm gonna do something a little bit extra in this bread pudding.

I wanna go with some bananas.

And I like Bananas Foster.

So we're gonna actually grab a couple of these KT bananas.

I want ones with a little bit of color on 'em.

These are the ones.

I know that I need vanilla for this recipe.

And instead of going to try and find, you know, vanilla extract on the shelves, I'm coming over here to the coffee bar.

I think today, I'm gonna go with a couple shots of the salted vanilla.

Sweet!

And now, for me, 'cause I'm in a Kwik Trip, we're going straight Colombian.

All right, I've got my Glazers, I've got my milk.

I've got my butter, I've got my sugar.

I've got my eggs, my banana, my vanilla, and my Karuba.

Booyah!

- Hi.

- Hi, how are you?

- I am good.

How are you?

- I'm great, thank you.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- Have a wonderful day.

- I will, thank you.

- I will see you next time.

- I can't wait.

Thanks, Phyllis.

- All right.

- Here we go.

[upbeat acoustic music] So we're at the point where we need to start this bread pudding.

And for reference, I've got this masonry oven hovering right around 350 degrees.

But we gotta start first with the Glazers.

Opening each one of these boxes up is like Christmas morning for me.

It's amazing.

Mm, that smells good.

You want to try it?

Get this parade of Glazers going here.

I've got today a Bundt pan.

I'm gonna take this Bundt pan and give it a quick spray with some cooking oil.

In this case, it's a little bit of olive oil, and I'm just gonna really lightly mist it.

Now, I'm gonna take these Glazers, and I'm gonna cut them into bite-sized chunks, just like this.

And into the Bundt pan they go.

So now that we're about two boxes of doughnuts in, I wanna add in my bananas.

We're gonna take two bananas and cut them into slices and layer the slices in.

This is gonna help us really compress that banana and Glazer flavor together, which should be a slam dunk.

Now, I've measured out 3 cups whole milk, and I wanna be able to pick that up and pour about half of it in there to really soak up that moisture.

Now, if we were making bread pudding with, say, day-old bread, we'd really want this to sit for a while.

But because these are Glazers, and these are special, light, fluffy pillows of deliciousness, I'm gonna take the time here with the spoon and press these down into that milk.

I like my bread pudding nice and dense.

So by removing those air pockets, it's gonna allow all that milk and that Glazer goodness to soak on in.

As you can see, our pan is only about halfway full.

So right now, I'm gonna take and cut up a couple more doughnuts, one more banana, and then we'll add the rest of the milk to the top of the mixture.

And let's give 'em another smush, shall we?

"Smush" is a culinary term, if you didn't know.

Oh, yeah, that's some good smushing.

It's time for our eggs.

For this recipe, looking at my Bundt pan, looking at how many Glazers I have in here and thinking about the bananas, I'm gonna probably use four whole eggs.

I'm gonna crack 'em into this bowl right here.

If we were making this without the Glazers, which I don't know why you would, but if you were, this would be the point where you would want to add a little bit of sugar into this bowl and then a little bit of that vanilla.

And trust me, I've got a little bit of that vanilla.

I think we went ham with four pumps earlier.

All right.

I'm gonna whisk these egg yolks together with a little bit of that salted vanilla.

What I wanna do here is just incorporate a little air.

Now's the time where we're gonna pour these eggs right over our Glazer mixture.

All right, what I'm gonna do is, real gentle-like, take and just work some of that egg in.

You can see that these Glazers are sucking up a ton of this moisture.

So this is ready to cook.

What we're going to do next is very simple.

It's essentially putting this in a giant water bath.

I know it sounds like maybe something that's a little over our pay grade, but I promise it's not.

And I'll show you just how easy this is.

I've got right here a pan set up for my water bath.

I've got about an inch and a half of water in the bottom.

And the water is going to act as a really, really awesome heating agent for this entire bread pudding.

We're gonna set it right in the middle, and now we're gonna cover it with some foil.

What we wanna do is we want to trap this moisture inside, which will actually steam the bread pudding together.

The eggs that we incorporated at the end cook at around 172 degrees.

So we want this to be a very gentle warming, which allows all that moisture to be redistributed through those Glazers that we put in there and really soak up that flavor.

If I were doing this at home, anything that you can put your bread pudding pan inside and just like I said, an inch, an inch and a half of water.

The more water you have, it takes a little longer to heat up.

But in this instance, it's going to work really, really well to steam it.

For some more technical recipes, you would want to consult a cookbook or, you know, send me an e-mail.

Using the induction burner, I'm going to adjust the temperature to 250 degrees.

Basically, what I wanna do is I wanna boil the water.

And right here, I have 1 cup of water and 3/4 of a cup of sugar.

We're gonna let this come to a boil.

And what we're doing is making caramel, Very, very simple, but very, very delicious.

We want this sugar to go through its caramelization.

And when it does that, we'll see it start to turn that luxurious brown color.

See right in here?

That's our sugar starting to caramelize.

I want to move it around because right now, it could be close to burning.

And I'm gonna kill that heat.

Now we can see that it's really starting to change color fast, which is awesome.

That means that we've hit that mark to make that caramel.

Man, this smell is so good.

All right, now that I've got almost all this butter in, we're gonna add two more things.

One, we're going back for our remaining bananas.

Now, I've got my caramel.

I'm gonna give it a little bit of slow heat.

So I have just a little bit of that bourbon.

Oh, yeah.

So we're gonna cook off the alcohol in this.

But what I wanted to do is infuse that flavor.

And last but not least, when this is kind of cooking down, cooking out, I'm gonna dust it with just a little bit of sea salt.

As you might imagine, the aromas are super complex.

I get notes of the banana, I can smell the butter, a little bit of the bourbon, and it's all kind of encased and enshrouded in that rich, caramelly goodness.

[upbeat music] Yeah!

Now, when it comes to something that's been steamed like this, the way to actually test if it's completed its cooking cycle is to touch it, and if it springs back against your finger, that means it's good.

I'm gonna take it out of the water bath.

Now, we're gonna do what is probably the hardest part of this recipe, and that is wait for it to cool before we dig in.

[sniffing] These smells take me back to my time at the Kwik Trip bakery.

Watching those Glazers come straight out of the fryer and under the glazing machine and getting to taste them with my boy Andy?

That's a smell and a taste I'll never forget, but this is pretty darn close.

Oh ho ho!

The most awesome part about this now is the opportunity to taste everything all together.

Glazer bread pudding with Kwik Trip bananas, a little bit of bourbon caramel, and some of that salted vanilla pump.

I think we gotta give it a taste.

That is kind of unspeakably good.

The Glazers absorbed all that milk, and so they became soft and almost like a whisper, a memory of a Glazer, with the banana and that rich, rich caramel, whoo.

And people can complain about convenience stores all day long.

But the reality of the situation is that in some communities, these convenience stores are an absolute lifeline-- the ability to walk in and get something that's fresh.

I'm not saying that Glazer bread pudding is something that should be eaten every day, but I do think that looking at something like Kwik Trip and taking the ingredients that you find there a step farther is a really fun and entertaining way to surprise yourself and those that you love the most.

I always said I wanted my character persona to be like if Fred Rogers and Guy Fieri had a baby.

- There you go.

- Yeah, yeah, here we are.

Now we're gonna take and add the remaining... Now we're gonna take and add the remaining melt mix.

Now we're gonna take and remain... hmm.

Would you do 20 Glazers on camera?

- [laughs] Would you pay me?

- Oh, look at that beautiful-- it's, like, making its own Glazer right in the middle.

♪ Get those bananas ♪ ♪ In that caramel sauce ♪ Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.

Smooosh!

[gentle music] - Did you know Organic Valley protects over 400,000 acres of organic farmland?

So are we an organic food cooperative that protects land, or land conservationists who make delicious food?

Yes; yes, we are.

Organic Valley.

- Twenty-minute commutes.

Weekends on the lake.

Warm welcomes and exciting career opportunities.

Not to mention all the great food!

There's a lot to look forward to in Wisconsin.

Learn more at InWisconsin.com.

-Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993.

Just a short drive from Madison, come visit "Swissconsin" and see where your beer's made.

- We have one chance to do it right and not compromise the integrity of the products or the company because it's easier or cheaper or faster.

- The Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers are proud underwriters of Wisconsin Foodie.

It takes love of the land and generations of farming know-how to nurture a quality potato crop.

Ask any potato farmer and they'll tell you, there's a lot of satisfaction in healthy-grown crops.

- With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore.

From local animal sourcing to on-site, high-quality butchering and packaging, The Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically raised, grass-fed, and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers.

The Conscious Carnivore: Know your farmer, love your butcher.

- Also with the support of the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.