A dozen bakers
Making the doughnuts, the bread and the cakes for Rutgers
Archived article from Feb 16, 2001
By Douglas Frank
Every evening the vanguard of a dozen bakers begins making the doughnuts that Rutgers students, faculty and staff members will eat the next day in the dining halls or after purchasing them at the Dunkin' Donuts store in the Livingston Student Center.
The university is a Dunkin' Donuts franchisee and prepares the doughnuts according to the company's specifications, using the ingredients supplied by the company. But the doughnuts, munchkins and crullers are only the tip of the iceberg for the men and women of the Central Bake Shop.
Beginning at 8 p.m., the bakers, working in three overlapping shifts spanning 22 hours a day, prepare strawberry cream-cheese pies, croissants, layer cakes, carrot cakes, Danish, Portuguese bread, dinner rolls, blueberry muffins, buttermilk biscuits and other pies, cakes, pastries and breads ranging from the plain to the fancy, all entirely from scratch.
Located in the Busch Dining Hall, the shop produces all the baked goods, except for bagels, for use by all the dining halls, catering services for university offices and alumni events, The Rutgers Club, the University Inn and Conference Center, and other cash operations on the New Brunswick and Piscataway campuses.
The amount is prodigious -- 300 to 400 dozen dinner rolls a day, for example, for just the students' meals.
"We bake thousands of items a month," says Anthony Cardinale, who heads the operation. "I don't even count anymore." Recipes are changed every week and new items are always tried out.
Cardinale, a veteran pastry chef, who came to Rutgers four years ago after a three-decade career working in such venues as Tavern on the Green and the Hilton hotels, as well as in Paris, Naples and Rome, says he motivates his staff to produce the highest-quality goods they can.
"I tell them, it's your signature -- a piece of bread, a roll, a cake. You have to take pride in what you do, because it is your signature. I want 100 percent from everybody, and top quality has to come out of the bake shop."
|
