Good things come in University Bakery packages By DONNA HIGGINS Collegian Feature Writer n one corner, a huge mixer beats 700 pounds of bread dough. A few feet away, a ma chine spews little balls of dough onto trays faster than anyone can count. And on one side of an oven, another machine wraps hamburger rolls in plastic to the tune of 1,000 dozen per hour. The noise is deafening. But the smell of the freshly-baked bread loaves coming out of the ovens is heavenly. If you could close your eyes to all the machinery and shut your ears to the roar, you would think you were sitting in a small bakery in your hometown. But you're not. This is the Universi ty Bakery,' one of the most efficient and productive bakeries in the coun try. • The Bakery, located in the Foods Building on North Atherton Street, produces all of the breads, rolls, cakes, pies, cookies, doughnuts, muf fins, turnovers, custards, dessert squares, macaroni, peas and cheese salads consumed by University stu dents. Bakery products go to the dining halls, the cash operations such as the HUB Eateries, the cafeteria in Kern Building and the dining hall snack bars. University bakery products are also sent to seven Commonwealth campuses, said Robert Reese, Foods Building manager. The only products that don't come out of bakery , ovens are danishes because of the time-consuming hand work involved in icing and decorating them, Reese said. He added, howev er, that production of fancy danishes may begin in the near future for sale in the cash operations. The bakery is a division of Housing and Food Services and is funded only through revenue from the cash opera tions and board money paid by stu dents, Reese said. ILL M ( Bakery products are made to be consumed while they are still rela tively fresh, Reese said. What the bakery produces at a given time depends on what the dining halls' menu calls for and what the dining halls, Commonwealth campuses and cash operations order, Reese said. The Bakery uses no preservatives in its products, he explained, so ev erything must be consumed almost immediately or frozen for shipment to the Commonwealth campuses. The University uses two trucks to deliver Bakery products to seven of the Commonwealth campuses: Mont Alto, Behrend College, Beaver, McK eesport, Hazleton, Capitol and Altoo na, Reese said. Each campus receives one delivery per week ex cept for Hazleton Campus, which receives a delivery once every two weeks. The reason all Commonwealth campuses are not served, Reese said, is because some are too far away and too small for delivery to be economi cal. Also, ingredients or supplies Uni versity Food Services needs must be available in a. delivery area for the trucks to bring back, he added. For example, trucks going to Be hrend College stop in Buffalo, N.Y. to pick up flour, Reese said. A trip to Mont Alto results in canned apples, applesauce and_ canned goods from Furman's Cannery. Hazleton yields bread bags, plastic wrap and frozen veal steaks. Two bakeries have been housed in the Foods Building, said Bruce Rath fon, manager of purchases for Food Services, who has worked in the de partment for 33 years. The first part of the bakery was built in 1949, and in 1958 an addition was added to expand the warehouse, freezer and refrigera tor space, Rathfon said. The Bakery was part of a, Universi ty plan to make Food Services more centralized and self-sufficient, said Thomas Gibson, director of Food Services. Before 1949, most individu- al dining halls did their own baking, Gibson said. Atherton Hall had a bakery in its basement that produced bread and rolls for the students who ate in the third floor dining room, Rathfon ex plained. McAllister Building, formerly a women's residence hall, had a dining hall and bakery that fed women from McAllister and Grange Building, which was also a women's residence hall, Rathfon said. The completion of Simmons, McEl wain and West Halls in the late 1940's greatly increased the number of stu dents eating University food, Reese said, adding that this increase cre ated a need for centralization of food service. The present location was chosen because of its proximity to the rail road tracks. Trains filled with sup plies could practically pull up to the door to unload, Gibson explained. How exactly can one bakery make all those doughnuts, rolls and loaves bf bread? The process begins when the flour, eggs, dried milk and other ingre dients are combined in a mixer that can mix up to 700 pounds of dough in 20 minutes, said Norm Weber, bakery production manager. "We use it for bread and roll dough," Weber said. "Other stuff, like cakes and cookies, get mixed in the upright mixers. They hold about 200 pounds each." When bread or roll dough has fin ished mixing, the front of the mixer rotates open and the dough pours into a well-greased "dough trough," a 10- foot long trough on wheels. Bread dough is wheeled to the bread divider and is fed into the machine, which scales, cuts and shapes the dough and puts it into pans. Before the dough is put into pans, it spends about 20 minutes in a part of the machine called a proof box. The "proofer" is like a sauna. Moist heat causes the dough to rise and relax, becoming softer and more flexible, Weber explained. For rolls, the trough goes to the roll panner. A hoist lifts the trough and tilts it forward. The "guillotine" front slides up and the dough pours into a funnel. The machine cuts and shapes the dough into balls that will become hamburger or hot dog rolls. The balls of dough wind their way through the roll proofer for about 20 minutes before the machine spews them onto trays, Weber said. The bread and roll dough goes into a larger proof box for about 45 min utes before going into the oven, he said. The oven has 18 shelves that contin ually rotate as the dough bakes. As it's finished, each shelf tips and the trays of fresh bread slide off onto a conveyor belt that brings them around to one of the most impressive features of the bakery the over head cooling system. Suction cups lift the bread or rolls out of their pans and deposit them on a conveyor rack that carries them up toward the ceiling. The loaves and rolls wind their way through 84 feet of parallel racks, each As rolls come out of a Bakery oven (left), they move down an assembly line towards a packaging machine. After they are packaged, Bakery employee Rod Woodrlng of Bellefonte stacks the rolls to be shipped out (bottom left). These bakery doughnuts receive a final touch vanilla glaze before they are ready for consumption. The bakery's doughnut machine can make 300 dozen doughnuts an hour. It produces three different kinds: cake doughnuts, which are covered with cinnamon or powdered sugar; jelly or cream•filied bismarks and glazed doughnuts. on top of the other. As the products reach one end of the racks, they curve down and proceed along the next level. After cooling, the bread is sliced and bagged by machine. An electric eye sees each loaf coming and acti vates an air jet that inflates a plastic bag. Metal "ears," which look like two hands, one on top of the other, reach out, grab the bag and yank it over the loaf. The end is automatical ly sealed and it is ready to go to its destination. Rolls go to the "pillow pack" ma chine, which wraps them in plastic. The bunches of rolls, usually three dozen to a pack, are held back and timed by a lever similar to the bar rier at a toll booth. The lever lifts at the correct instant and the rolls bump into plastic wrap. They drag the wrap along with them until just the right instant, when a hot metal rod drops down and closes and seals the end. The machine is ready for the next bunch. The Bakery's doughnut machine, capable of producing 300 dozen each hour, is one of the newest and most efficient made, Weber said. "The machine cuts and shapes them," said Margaret Woods of Phil lipsburg, a Bakery employee. "Then they go into the proofer." The doughnuts are placed four across on small, narrow trays that snake their way up and down through the proofer for 30 to 35 minutes. "When they're finished in the proof er, they fry in fat, first on one side, then on the other. They are flipped halfway," she explained, pointing to a mechanism that lopked like a pad dlewheel. Three kinds of doughnuts go through this process, Weber said: cake doughnuts, which are usually covered with powdered sugar or cin ammon; bismarks, that are filled with cream or jelly; and raised doughnuts, which are glazed. "If they're glazed like these," Woods said, pointing out some freshly made glazed doughnuts, "they go through this glaze before we pack them." Chocolate or vanilla glaze is pumped up from its container into a trough with holes in the bottom. The glaze forms a curtain that the dough nuts pass through. However, the process hasn't al ways been this efficient. Ralph Hos terman, retired manager of the Foods Building, remembers the bak ery in the basement of Atherton Hall. "They had one oven," Hosterman, a retired manager of the foods build ing, recalled. "They used a duchess roll machine to cut dough. They had to pat the dough and pull a lever to cut it, then put it in pans by hand. We took some of that equipment, including the roll machine, to the Foods Building," "At first in the Food Building, for bread, all we had was a molder. We had to cut the loaves by hand, round them up by hand then you dropped them in the molder. That rolled them into a long loaf. Then you had to pan it by hand. It went to the proof box then from there it went to the oven. You had to put each pan in the oven," he said. "When the Foods Building opened in 1949, we were baking for about 5,- 000 students," Hosterman said. "A lot of the work was done by hand. The modern machinery wasn't available yet. We started at 5 a.m. and were lucky to get out by 5 p.m. We had 12 employees who worked two shifts then. We worked long hours and worked six days per week." Now the Bakery operates seven days a week and has 24 full-time employees. They work eight hour shifts, arriving at work between 4 and 8 a.m., Reese said. New equipment increased produc tion while decreasing labor, Hoster man continued. "We used to have to slice the bread Products are sent to the University dining halls, cash operations such as the HUB Eateries and seven of the Commonwealth campuses. Bakery items, like these hamburger buns, (bottom right) are inspected on their way to packaging. The Daily Collegian Tuesday,. Jan. 28, 1986 : 4 A - t by hand. Now that is done automat ically. It's all cut, divided, molded, panned, sliced and bagged by ma chine now. The only time they touch it is to take it off the bread divider and put it into the proofer," he explained. Another machine that has greatly increased efficiency is the Artoflex machine, said Hosterman. The ma chine was intended to mix pie crusts, but employees discovered that it also did a good job mixing the salads that the Bakery now makes. Hosterman said that another im portant advancement was instant yeast. "You put it in and then there's a pill you put with it that creates a gas that makes the bread raise," he said. "You don't have to worry about re frigerating the yeast. You eliminate the floor time. We used to have to put the dough into a trough for two hours and let it rise." Instant yeast allows bakery em ployees to mix the bread and let it stand for 10 minutes before putting it in the machine. The dough is then more relaxed and easier for the ma chine to handle, Hosterman said. The University Bakery has gone through many changes since its days in the basement of Atherton and McAllister halls, Hosterman said. From small bakeries that fed only a few thousand students, new machin ery and an efficient baking process has made it one of the most produc tive bakeries in the country. "Now they can do 400 to 600 loaves of bread in about 15 minutes. It used to take us almost all day to do that many, with all the hand work," Hos terman said. "Students are amazed that we can do all this here." Photos by Bonni Lee Britton .-....T:1i.eny910.1. ........ ',. -. ' . .. - .::''..,,.':: . •••:.. - ..pielve ari.......':':.....,i!!,..,:',.:.:.:....".,:::,..„ question, :.i.....''' - ',._• , ,:i.e . ion is your answer. "You don't need $2,000 a year. You can deposit a lot less than that into an IRA at Mellon Bank." "Each household member who works can deduct up to $2,000 on their income tax when they invest in an IRA." "Some insurance firms and stockbrokers charge for many of the things Mellon does free of charge on an IRA." '~/ "Even though there are penalties for early withdrawal, sometimes an IRA can save you so much on taxes that you're still ahead." "You can get more than certificates for your IRA. We offer stocks, bonds and mutual funds—with a discount on the commission." "You haven't missed the deadline. You can open a Mellon IRA for your 1985 income tax year up until April 15, 1986." From Lake Erie and Three Rivers to Rehoboth Beach, from State College to Valley Forge, more people get a Mellon Banker's help on opening their IRA than from anyone else in Pennsylvania and Mellon Bank A neighbor you can count on '' ' ''' . "You can deduct up to $2,000 each if you both work. Or a total of $2,250 if one of you works." "We'll make it easy for you to transfer your IRA from anywhere to the security of Mellon Bank." "When you're shopping for an IRA, look for experience and expertise in your banker. And security in your bank." Delaware combined. Why not join them and enjoy the benefits of a Mellon IRA. Stocks, bonds and mutual funds privately insured, not FDIC insured. Mellon Bank, Mellon Bank (East), Mellon Bank (DE), Mellon Bank (Central), Mellon Bank (North). Members FDIC. The Daily Collegian Tuesday, Jan. 28, 1986-3
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