Iowa district’s central bakery helps reduce costs

DAVENPORT, Iowa — By 7 a.m., the small crew at the bakery in the Davenport Community School District’s Davenport Learning Center already has been hard at work.

Several large carts hold trays and trays filled with chocolate chip, chocolate, oatmeal raisin and snickerdoodle cookies, fresh out of the large walk-in oven.

Faye Wyers takes out a worn blue binder and flips to the recipe of one of the Davenport Community School District bakery’s biggest staples: whole-grain dinner rolls.

Although she pretty much knows the recipe by heart, she takes a quick glance before getting to work.

First, she drags a large barrel full of white sugar over to the counter and measures out the amount she needs. She then dumps the sugar into an industrial-size mixer.

Then she adds three containers of yeast, two sacks of flour, salt, oil, dry milk and water.

After eight minutes in the mixer, the batter is shaped into three-pound dough balls and will go into a dough rounder to shape it into 72 individual rolls.

The finished product will be packed up and ready for a delivery person to pick them up and deliver them the next day to schools across the district.