Strips of enriched dough fried until puffed and crisp, dusted heavily with icing sugar, made for Carnival.
What makes it bugnes
A dough enriched with eggs and butter.
Rolled thin, cut and twisted.
Deep-fried and buried in icing sugar.
Where it comes from
Lyon eats them in the weeks before Lent, as much of Europe eats fried dough before the fast — oil and eggs used up, a feast before the lean time. The Italian chiacchiere and the Spanish orejas are near relations.
There are two camps: thin and crisp, or thicker and soft. Lemon or orange-flower water scent the dough, and the classic shape is a strip with a slit cut through, one end pulled through it.