Pastors launch doughnut, cookie bakery from Hornell home: Meet the Dukes of Dough

The Dukes of Dough are baking it up in Hornell.

The Seneca Road doughnut and cookie makers were filling online orders for the first time on Wednesday following a successful soft launch the previous weekend at Arkport Summerfest.

“We have been up all morning making our doughnut toppings and prepping our doughnut dough and we just finished frying our dough,” said Brittany Bolduc, who operates the business with her husband, Joel, out of their home.

Right now, all orders for Dukes of Dough creations are placed through the business website, Facebook messenger and Instagram messenger. Everything is pre-order “because we are a home bakery and it does take us time to produce the product," Brittany Bolduc said.

She closes the orders the night before at 8 p.m.

Pick-up hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday, anytime between 2:30-5 p.m. at 336 Seneca Road, the red house next to Station Church, where the Bolducs, parents of four children, are the co-pastors.

Dukes of Dough offer a variety of unique treats

Dukes of Dough offers doughnuts by the half dozen with a doughnut box of the week that includes three classic doughnuts and three artisan doughnuts. For the opening week, the doughnut selection included Glaze Craze, Powdered Perfection, Pretty 'N Pink, Biscoff Blitz, Tuxedo Twist and Lemon Cookie Bliss.

The flavors will change every week.

Dough nuggets, more commonly called "doughnut holes," are also a weekly offering. The Dough Nuggets are yeast-raised.

Two or three varieties of cookies are also available each week. For its opening days, the Dukes of Dough cookie flavors were chocolate chip and circus animal.

"I prep my doughnut dough and I prep my cookie dough at night," Brittany Bolduc said. "It actually gives the doughnuts and the cookies better flavor if we prep it the night before. When we wake up in the morning, all of that dough is just ready for us to get to work.”

From sweet lover to artisan doughnut maker

Brittany Bolduc said she is a self-proclaimed "desserty" and the start of Dukes of Dough fulfills a family dream "that we would someday own a doughnut shop."

She added, "I really can’t explain it. It was just something we laughed about at first. We thought it was just one of those silly dreams, 'Oh, wouldn’t that be cool?'"

The Bolducs moved to Hornell about seven years ago from the Adirondack region of New York state to pastor what was then known as New Life Assembly of God Church.

In 2019, they relaunched the church as Station Church and continue to lead “a wonderful, thriving church and we are very excited about it," Brittany Bolduc said.

Not initially interested in cooking or baking, Brittany went to the store on a lark one day and picked up all the ingredients needed to make doughnuts.

Then she got frying.

Not satisfied with confining herself to baking just glazed doughnuts, she began following popular doughnut makers on social media and soon gained enough confidence to begin creating her own doughnut concoctions.

For awhile, the family would drive around Hornell every night around 5 and deliver doughnuts to friends. Soon, they were making so many that they couldn’t just deliver to friends anymore and the question became: “Hey, why don’t we actually turn this into a business?"

Brittany, 33, and Joel, 35, feel they have good plan in place to start.

“This gives us the opportunity to learn the process," Brittany said. “For a long time I have been frying small batches of doughnuts. So it is definitely a learning process to learn how to produce quantities out of my home.”

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Ten percent of every purchase donated to Project Rescue

The Bolducs decided that their new business had to have a purpose greater than the bottom line. That's why they have committed to donating 10% of every purchase to Project Rescue, an organization dedicated to rescuing women and children from sexual slavery.

Bolduc said Project Rescue is a global ministry that “they know, that they love and have been involved with for years.”

Dukes of Doughnuts had a great time at Summerfest. Word of mouth and social media postings brought brisk cookie buying traffic and many well wishers, Brittany Bolduc said.

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With plenty of orders to fill on that first day, Bolduc called the Dukes of Dough opening week "spectacular," and she expressed particular satisfaction with how much money was raised for Project Rescue.

She added, “Our hope is to open a brick and mortar (store) but right now it’s wait and see what happens. Wait and see if our community is receptive to having a doughnut shop in town because they haven’t had a doughnut shop in a long time. We are excited."

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This article originally appeared on The Evening Tribune: Dukes of Dough launch home bakery business on Seneca Road in Hornell