Vintage Recipe for Bakery Dough
Vintage bakery dough scaled test batch coffee cake with streusel topping.
This bulk bakery dough recipe is from my family archives. My grandfather was active as a baker in Los Angeles from 1919 to 1965. During that time, he was the head baker at Schaber's Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles. In that era, the cafeteria could serve thousands of people per day.
The recipe is called "Coffee Cake." The dough batch flavoring is indicated as custard and vanilla. The recipe yields a large dough batch divided into doughnuts, cross buns, and rolls. The rolls, likely Swiss Rolls, rolled dough, or "Jelly Rolls" style, use Oleo, an old name for margarine, to coat them. The cross buns would be hot cross buns or orange buns. Oranges grew well and were plentiful in Southern California then, so they were an understandable fruit to use as an addition to buns and classically Californian.
Vintage Schaber's Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles recipe for Coffee Cake bakery dough.
Vintage Bulk Bakery Dough Ingredients
The baker's percentages for the recipe are about 61% dough hydration. The estimated water content in the milk, eggs, and butter is 22 pounds of water to 36 pounds of flour. This would require a 60 or 80-quart commercial bakery mixer. The ingredients are:
27 pounds of hard flour
9 pounds of pastry flour
6 pounds Sugar
9 oz salt
5 pounds of butter
5 quarts eggs
2 gallons milk
2 - ½ pounds of yeast and flavoring
Yeast Bakery Pastry Dough
The 61% hydration would make it a firm, easy-to-handle enriched dough with butter, sugar, custard, and vanilla flavoring. This is in the hydration range for yeast pastry dough. Using yeast would also contribute to flavor.
Vintage Dough Flour Types
The recipe states "Hard flour" 27 pounds (high-protein bread flour) for 2/3 and "pastry flour" 9 pounds for 1/3. This mixture of flour is equivalent to modern all-purpose flour.
Large Batch Bulk Bakery Dough
I calculated the recipe yields 75.5 pounds of dough. It was divided into the following.
Doughnuts, 22 pounds
Cross Buns, 10 pounds
The remaining 43.5 pounds of dough are divided into 2 pieces, each 21.75 pounds. Each 21.75 pieces of dough rolled in 3 to 3 – ½ pounds of Oleo. I calculated this would fill three full-size, 13-quart baking pans each for six full-size pans.
West Coast Cuisine Recipe Research
I consulted the 1952 edition of West Coast Cookbook to research additional dough recipes from the era. It was written by Helen Brown, a noted authority of the era who lived in Southern California.
A dough recipe for Walnut Rum Rolls used the same essential ingredients without the flavorings. I calculated the dough at 73% hydration, similar enough to use as a reference point. The recipe noted to use overnight refrigeration of the dough. The recipe states:
““Put it in the refrigerator overnight, with or without having allowed a preliminary rising””
The extended cold fermentation time would positively affect the dough's overall flavor, handling, and texture characteristics. A cold overnight fermentation would likely yield excellent results for this large batch recipe's dough.
I am working to scale this recipe for the home kitchen to a reasonable batch size. The initial overnight cold fermented test batch I made has a streusel-type topping and is baked in an 8" x 8" cake pan to replicate more of a traditional coffee cake.
The flavor is mild but good, not overly sweet, and better than that of a chemically leavened coffee cake. I look forward to further testing the scaled recipe and adjusting the ingredients and baking time to optimize the small-batch version of the dough.
Schaber's Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles, where my grandfather was the head baker. Note the See's Candies to the right; getting a box or two at Christmas time when LA is still a family's must-do.
