SF Bay Area's best doughnut? Time to vote!

Julie Clark, owner of Stan's Donuts, took over the shop started by her father, Stan Wittmayer, more than 50 years ago. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)
Readers love the old-timey signs in the Santa Clara shop. They emailed it to us many times during nominations. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)
You won't see cronuts or other modern hybrids at Stan's. Just the originals. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)
It's a different vibe at Donut Savant, where donuts are like modern works of art. (Gary Reyes/Bay Area News Group)
At the Oakland shop, donuts come in a variety of styles, shapes and sizes. Doughnuts come in many sizes, shapes, flavors and textures at Donut Savant, photographed Tuesday, June 4, 2013 in Oakland, Calif. (D. Ross Cameron/Bay Area News Group)
At Dynamo Donuts in San Francisco, they get creative with donuts like the Simpsons-inspired "Doh! Nut" to complement ACT's production of "Mr. Burns."

By Jessica Yadegaran | jyadegaran@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: June 19, 2019 at 6:00 a.m. | UPDATED: July 11, 2019 at 8:31 a.m.

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No matter your age or background, doughnuts are everyone’s favorite treat. There’s just something about warm, sweet, deep-fried dough that makes everyone happy.

It’s part nostalgia, part special treat and completely delicious, whether you wash yours down with coffee or milk. These days, doughnuts come in every size and variety: round, oblong, vegan, sprinkle-topped and farm-to-table.

So who makes the best doughnut in the Bay Area? A few weeks ago, we asked readers to nominate their favorite Bay Area doughnut shops — and we were inundated with emails. Nominations, certainly, but also photos of grandchildren devouring Long Johns, a poem about a reader’s favorite plain glazed and the dramatic tale of a post-doughnut-run car fire. Fortunately, says World’s Fare doughnuts devotee Tom Ferreira, “I was able to rescue the doughnuts before my car was totally engulfed in flames — and gave them to the fire crew that came to rescue me.”

Now that’s doughnut devotion.

And now, we’re pitting your favorite 32 doughnut spots against one another to see which hole-in-the-wall mom and pop or modern bakery deserves the title of Best Doughnut Shop — and asking you to be judge, jury and eater.

Note: Voting has closed and a winner — Hayward’s World’s Fare Donuts! — has been anointed, but here are the 32 original nominees: