Baker follows his dream to focus on doughnuts in his own shop

"Are the croissants ready yet?" asked a plaintive Landa Alex, who works a night shift at Coca-Cola headquarters nearby and is such a regular customer that he often arrives before daybreak.

"Give me a moment, Landa," Grant said. "Almost there."

Grant ducked back into the small kitchen to drop two dozen furled crescent rolls into the fryer. A minute later they were brown, puffed and swimming in a tray of glaze. He kept a wary eye on the front room, as he runs a one-man show.

An accomplished baker, Grant bought this small and minimally equipped doughnut shop late last year, when it was called Bearberry Donut. The previous tenants had lasted only two weeks, recounts Grant, who at the time was a production supervisor for Flowers Foods, the manufacturer of Nature's Own and Cobblestone Mill breads. It was the kind of responsible job a career-driven culinarian ends up in but dreams of leaving. Particularly when doughnuts call.

Grant got bitten by the doughnut bug at his Marietta high school, when a Dunkin' Donuts poohbah came to speak to his class on career day. As a young Navy recruit, he delighted the crew aboard the U.S.S. John Young in the Persian Gulf with cinnamon sugar doughnuts. After his tour of duty, Grant attended the Culinary Institute of America and then the American Institute of Baking.

He was perfectly set to be a production supervisor — a job he held for the three years until that fateful day he drove by the defunct doughnut shop and heard the cruller's siren call.

So the young baker cashed out his 401(k) and was up and operating within two weeks. He didn't have (and still doesn't have) enough money to change the sign outside with the (from his point of view) offensive spelling "donut."

Grant developed the recipe — frying his doughnuts at a higher temperature for a shorter period of time to get maximum puff. He bristles at the "Hot Donuts Now" mentality.

"If the product only tastes good hot, it's not a good product to begin with," he says.

Yet he sells in a day fewer doughnuts than a Krispy Kreme would supply to one office party.

"I'm living doughnut to doughnut," Grant says with a laugh. "I'm only up to about 200 a day, so business is slow. But, hey, I'm feeling good, looking good, that's always good."

A similarly mellow vibe permeates Sublime Doughnuts. A small boom box in the corner plays a mix of down-tempo hip-hop and R&B seduction music. Children's books with doughnut themes are scattered about the tables. Coffee doesn't come from a pitcher but from a French press that gives Grant a moment of conversation with each customer.

They are regulars, mostly. Grad students at Georgia Tech, Coke worker bees, a few foodies who've heard about this hole-in-the-wall through the Blissful Glutton blog of Atlantan Jennifer Zyman. Many eat a doughnut while they wait for their coffee and then take two more to go. They all make jokes about addiction, pat their stomachs, claim they should watch the intake, but the doughnuts are ... just ... too ... good.

What about that other childhood treat we're all in thrall to — the cupcake?

"Yeah, I don't know," Grant avers. "I'm thinking of making a cake doughnut next. But I'm not so interested in cupcakes. Doughnuts are where I'm at."

As Homer Simpson so memorably said: "Doughnuts. Is there anything they can't do?"

• Sublime Doughnuts: 535 10th St., 404-897-1801