A doughnut that's good for your heart ranks up there with a cigarette that's good for your lungs, right?

That would be wrong, especially when a North Dakota bakery product comes to the market this summer.

Fetting's Frozen Bakery Products, based in Finley, has developed a cake doughnut with sugary coatings that's high in fiber and essential vitamins, and should be available within months.

They went over like, well, doughnuts at the county fair, when sample trays of them were dropped off at the Legislature a couple of weeks ago.

The bakery is only one aspect of the new doughnut that starts in North Dakota's golden grain fields and is milled in North Dakota's State Mill and Elevator.

What binds the field, the mill and the bakery together is a specialty crop - hard white spring wheat - and producers willing to plant it.

White wheat is a relatively new crop in North Dakota, worth 35 cents more per bushel at the state elevator than hard red spring wheat, with a freight incentive thrown in for good measure.

Judge Barth, who heads up the North Dakota Farmers Union Dakota Pride Cooperative, is looking for producers who will plant a total of 5,000 acres of white wheat for milling at the state elevator.

While he's had a lot of interest from producers, he's so far only got commitments for one-third of the certified seed for spring planting. Best hurry, though, he said.

He'd love to see a few western North Dakota producers give it a go. The more arid conditions there might be just right for white wheat, which, unlike its red wheat cousin, is slightly more prone to sprout damage under certain conditions, he said.

"I think it would do well from here on west, the Regent and Hettinger area," said Barth, from Mandan.

The Farmers Union promotes white wheat because producers can get a better economic return for it, Barth said.

He said it's not the right fit for every producer, especially guys with gargantuan acreage operations, but it might fit small, more flexible operators who can more easily clean down machinery and segregate the grain.

The downside is that a lengthy trip to the State Mill and Elevator in Grand Forks might eat up the maximum 20 cents per bushel freight incentive.

The idea of using white wheat flour in doughnuts was raised last summer when Barth started looking for some way to get the white wheat into a consumable product.

"That's where we came in," said Jerry Haugen, co-owner of the bakery, incorporated as Top Taste Inc., which employs 55 people in the small Griggs County community. It's known for frozen bread dough among 300 products distributed across 30 states.

Haugen said he and his partners agreed to experiment with the white wheat flour and, working in concert with product development staff from the State Mill and Elevator, they came up with a fried cake doughnut that's been put through a baker's dozen trials so far.

"When you eat these doughnuts, you know you've eaten a doughnut," Barth said.

Haugen said the white wheat is a whole wheat product, so the fiber is high and nutrients remain in the flour, rather than having to be fortified.

"When you bite into it, you can actually see the grain," Haugen said. "It's dense and very good tasting."

Haugen said the company will finalize the recipe within the next couple of months and then complete the doughnuts' nutritional profile, anticipating that the whole grains and the high fiber will fit the heart-healthy trend that many food consumers are seeking.

He said the company wanted to support the new white wheat flour and at the same time build a following for it in the baking industry. It may expand into a white wheat bread product.

"We're just really getting started," Haugen said. "It's exciting for us. It's not a 'me, too' product. It's unique."

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 748-5511 or lauren@;westriv.com.)