Recipe for life
You put the doughnut in your mouth and feel the glazed, fluffy-breaded wisps melt like cotton candy on your tongue. What kinds of ingredients go into such pastry masterpieces?
A pound of flour? Sugar?
A sprinkle of family and loyal employees?
Two tablespoons of sudden illness?
A pinch of politics and Garth Brooks?
Lynn Hobbs began working at the Royale Bakery, which is now King Hair on Main Street, to put himself through college. He liked baking so much, he dropped out of Utah State University to bake full time. That was 33 years ago.
Thirteen years ago Lynn became part owner of Shaffer’s Bakery and operates the Macey’s Grocery Store location. In that time, he has learned that many ingredients go into a successful bakery.
Hobbs’ “day” begins at 3 a.m. He enters the bakery through the back door. He’s dressed completely in white except for a dark baseball cap. His son, Jeff, starts an hour earlier and has already mixed 200 pounds of dough. Jeff is wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and white pants. A black baseball cap sits backward on his head and covers his closely shaved hair. He’s pushing and organizing pastry racks stacked with cinnamon rolls, pies and other goodies.
Two 10-by-5 foot maple-wood tables take up any extra space. They’re covered with flour, just like the stainless steel flour bins, the coolers, the radio, the counters and the bug-zapper in the corner.
Flour is the main ingredient for making pastries. Shaffer’s goes through about 800 pounds a day, except for weekends, when about 1,200 pounds will do. The flour and other ingredients are mixed into 200-pound chunks of dough that, when laid upon the tables, resemble conquered sumo wrestlers. Lynn and Jeff cut the dough into smaller, baby-size pieces that are easier to work with. They sprinkle flour on the table occasionally to keep the dough from sticking.
The bakers roll the dough into 4-foot squares and begin to cut out doughnut shapes with industrial-size cutters. The cutters consist of tightly placed dies wrapped around a cylinder. They are about a half-foot in diameter. With one roll, the bakers make 20 doughnuts.
Lynn Hobbs is one of few bakers around who still makes dough from scratch.
“Other bakeries use frozen dough,” he said. “They run them around the oven a little, glaze them over and put them out. We do it the old fashioned way I guess.”
On this morning, Lynn will have to do things the old-fashioned way. His 20-year-old mixer broke with a loud klang as its 40-gallon mixing bowl shed the fasteners and fell to the floor in a cloud of flour. His bakery has a new digital mixer, but there’s a lot to do and he needs both mixers.
It’s 3:30 a.m., but Lynn puts in a call to the mixer repairman. The repair man says he’ll be right over.
“Nothing like getting them out of bed early,” Lynn said.
Does he mind getting out of bed early?
“I personally couldn’t stand to work 9 to 5,” he said. “I like to fish, go golfing, work in the yard. When would you have time to do those things if you had a regular job? Some people waste a lot of time sleeping; I don’t.”
And neither do his employees. Tracey and Brandon arrive at about 4 a.m. Lynn orders Brandon to mix some glaze in a small bowl, because the mixer is broken. Tracey immediately gets busy stacking trays and moving racks around the bakery.
Tracey has a baby and her husband goes to school, so the early work hours are great for her schedule.
“She can work and still be at home with her baby,” Lynn said.
Brandon is a student and likes bakery hours because they’re good for school. He also likes the friendly environment at Lynn’s bakery.
“They’re good people to work for,” Brandon said. “And they’re always setting me up on dates.”
“Brandon sings like a canary over there if the date went well,” Jeff said.
His employees enjoy working for him, but Lynn expects a lot. He hires his employees through the Utah Job Service.
“One of the first things I ask them is if they’re willing to work early hours, weekends and holidays,” Lynn said. “If they even hesitate, that’s the end of the interview.”
Lynn was never more thankful for his employees than he was a year ago. Jeff, Lynn’s only son, thought he had an inner-ear infection. Because he was getting married, he didn’t have time to thoroughly check it out. He thought the illness would go away after time. Jeff got married, but the symptoms persisted. His doctors recommended a CAT Scan, but the results didn’t show anything. When Jeff had been married one month, a magnetic resonance imaging revealed an inoperable, golf ball-size brain tumor.
For a few days, Lynn had to place his bakery into the hands of his employees.
“Everybody stepped up and covered,” he said. “In all sincerity, I had the best employees in the whole state.”
By now the smell of glaze and pastry has permeated the air. The workers are shuffling about, pushing tray racks; loading, unloading, dipping and dripping everything imaginable. One tray rack is filled with an assortment of M&Ms, crushed candy, coconut and anything else you could want sprinkled on your doughnuts. Lynn and Jeff are rolling 7-foot dough snakes out onto the tables. Lynn’s hands move over the dough like a concert pianist playing a crescendo.
Country music plays from a small, flour-covered radio on a shelf. Country is Jeff’s choice of music. He has to tune in before his dad arrives, though, or it’s classic rock. Lynn is a Beach Boys and Eagles fan.
“I like those groups,” Lynn said, “or any oldies band will do.” He pauses and has a puzzled look on his face. “Where did that chunk of dough go?” Lynn mumbles to himself. “Oh, there it is.”
He grabs a 50-pound slab of dough from a tray lying on a case of bananas. Only in a bakery can such a huge chunk of dough be misplaced.
Lynn said a baker’s worst nightmare is “taking a nap in the afternoon and waking up when it’s light. You think you’ve slept in” – and missed the morning shift.
How do you make a successful banana bread? According to Lynn, the blacker the bananas, the better.
“If they’re green, you may as well try to make it with a potato.”
December is the big banana bread month for the bakery. People like to give the bread as gifts. Thanksgiving, however, is the bakery’s most busy time.
The week before Thanksgiving, the bakery makes about 1,500 dinner rolls and 600 pumpkin pies. The day before, the bakery makes 150 cream pies and 150 pie shells.
“You really go,” Lynn said. “It drives the [employees] nuts, it’s so busy.”
By 5:30 a.m., most of the morning’s doughnuts are neatly placed in the glass display cases in front of the bakery. Macey’s is beginning to buzz as customers trickle in.
In a few hours, Lynn will go home for the day and fish, play golf or whatever. Pallets of flour and sugar and other ingredients will come and go from his bakery. Lynn knows, however, that the most important ingredients are the people that he works with, the family that he works for and the variety of experiences he has had in 33 years of baking.
He wouldn’t change that recipe for anything in the world.