The rise of what was once the largest doughnut empire in the United States started at sea. When Bob Pelton, a drugstore clerk from Salt Lake City, returned home from his European tour as a baker in the U.S. navy in the 1930s, he had potato doughnuts on the brain. It wasn’t an original idea. Germans like to kick off their pre-Lenten revelry with platters of fastnachts, yeast-raised fritters often made with mashed potatoes. Similar recipes had already migrated across the Atlantic courtesy of the German immigrants in Pennsylvania, who…
