Dunkin Donuts Muffins

The OUKosher website lists different facilities for different kinds of muffins under their supervision.

I don’t see that. All I see are a list of products that the OU may certify. There isn’t any indication of where the Kosher products are made or if these products are always Kosher, in fact the certificates I saw all list DDs corporate HQ address and state that the OU symbol is required.

Someone I know in the restaurant business told me that every 5th or so DD does the baking for the other stores in its region. Even if the region is larger then 5 stores, as I mentioned before, the cartons that get delivered to the stores are clearly marked with an OU. Interesting, but their egg sandwich box also has the OU. Of course, those are heated up in their convection ovens, same as the bacon, ham et al, so no matter how lenient you chose to be, there has to be a limit! BTW, most of the stores I’ve been are run by Indians, not Muslims.

I spoke to Rabbi Mehlman last week, as he provides the hechsher for the New York DD (that have a hechsher). He said that about 2-3 years ago DD changed their procedure. They now ship the donuts (and other stuff) partially baked to each franchisee and each franchisee must finish baking it. Rabbi Mehlman said that DD franchisees without a hechsher can bake their kosher and non-kosher items together.

(He said it was better under the older system, as far as kashrus, for reasons I didn’t quite understand. He also said some DD franchisees still use the older system, but there is no way to know which are which offhand.)

somewhereone – Don’t tell this to some posters here. Tov Sheyewho Shoggegim M’sheyewho Mazidim!

rebdoniel –

R’ Soloveitchik held like R’ Tam, le chatchila.

Someone else indicated this to me as well. I would love to see a source for this claim, as it is a big chiddush and a game changer.

Man, i would really like this to keep being discussed. All i want is a pumpkin muffin but the DD right near my office isn’t certified kosher :/

How do i find out? I feel like the workers in that branch don’t actually know this info, rather they just see a truck that comes every morning and food gets stocked

They use the same scoop for the kosher flavors as they use for the non-kosher flavors.

Joseph, surely they rinse the scoop between flavors.

There isn’t a central baking location. DD makes almost nothing on their own. They contract with manufactures who eiteieither make mixes for them or actually bake products which are then “baked off” at the store locations.
As a 30 year mashgiach veteran I find it interesting how so manmany make assumptions with any real knowledge of the susituation. I would like to see the statement from Rav Belsky zzt”l in writing. With bakery enhancers, emulsifiers, etc. I would be very careful about eating an uncertified bagel

Last I checked, all baked goods are made in a central location and sent to the store.

When was the last time you checked, and with whom did you check?

assume for a moment you are not in a deserted place and you have choices, then even if a product is normally supplied and kosher, an owner who did not get delivery can substitute other product legally. is that a concern halakhically? ask a competent posek!

I checked with joseph

I’m a bit skeptical that its “OK” to eat muffins/bagels that were either baked or reheated in an oven that might have been used to cook or reheat treifus, even if not at the same moment or an employee of the DD might have used that oven to heat up his/her ham and cheese sandwich for lunch.

don’t take this the wrong way, but being “skeptical” isn’t really helping me here, as i completely understand why someone would feel skeptical about it. be that as it may, there are even some poseks (mostly sfardi ones, i believe) that say one can eat food made with gelatin, since its no longer actual food (or, no longer the pig), since it has been broken down so much. similarly, in an oven, food that was previously heated inside of it — anything that is left of it, is no longer food. this can therefore be understood in the same manner

I hear that you can’t pasken on “skeptical” but you also can’t make statements like that about the oven being fine after having treif food heated in it. You would need to know if anything dripped anywhere, if any bits of it are still in the oven etc. It’s loads of fun to try to present people who keep halacha as neurotic and overdoing it, but “an oven that had treif things warmed in it” is not the same as the status of an oven in a treif store that you don’t know is clean, filthy, has food stuck to it from the bakers lunch yesterday etc. Or that the muffins are in there while other stuff is as well.

Milhouse- agreed that surely is used in Halacha but not without research. You can’t say surely they rinse it just because you think they should. If you visit a store you will find a trough of water with an absorbent sponge. The server dips the scoop into the trough and dabs it on the sponge a few times. Surely that’s not what you meant by rinsing.

@Milhouse that’s actually a pretty interesting point. I feel that it should be good enough for us

“@milhouse that’s actually a pretty interesting point. I feel that it should be good enough for us”

so what?

Maybe good enough for those who don’t like a flavor would it be good enough for someone with a lethal allergy?

(The wisdom of the chachamim , I used to think that it made no sense to say that a flavor would come out of a clean dish or pot and had trouble with the logic of having separate dishes in situations when the pot was clean. But then I learns about allergies and how a person who has a severe allleegy can’t eat from something that was cooked in a pot that was used with that allergen. )

Joseph, yes. If it doesn’t affect the taste then it’s not a problem. if someone ordering vanilla got some chocolate in it, they’d complain. So the rinsing must be good enough to prevent that. Tell me why that should not be good enough for kashrus purposes.

that’s the thing – we don’t know, and we assume it doesn’t, since if you ask them for an item, they give you that item, without mixing it with another item. as we said, if they did that, they would lose customers, as customers would be upset that they mixed up their foods with other foods they may not like.

this is why we can assume that there will not be any “visible trief or basar bcholov” in it, simply for obvious reasons. and if thats the case, then based on what we said above, we can consume a muffin (for example), since we use common sense, and assume that it is not mixed with anything else. obviously people can be machmir, which is seemingly the approach you are taking, which is completely understandable

Funny….as someone who is clearly not the most machmir on certain issues of kashrus, I would be uncomfortable eating anything that was heated in an oven where there was even a small likelihood of dual useage for treifus. I would worry about that more than whether the creamer for the coffee was cholov yisroel or cholov stam. I’m sure that is a contrarian view and not necessarily correct k’halacha as some have posited above but some concerns are just habitual.

“You’re okay with a Jew every now and then getting a little treif flavor?”

As previously discussed, there’s straight up Halacha that says burnt substances of any food are no longer considered food. When we’re talking about an oven, that’s the “flavor” you would be getting. And as mentioned previously, even many sfardi poskim say that even gelatin in foods isn’t an issue for this exact reason: it’s simply no longer food, as it’s been broken down so much.