Bob the Baker and His 16,000 Cookies

Robert Stowe, Head Baker, will retire this spring after a long career in the basement kitchen of Proctor. “According to human resources, it’s 49 years. Which is fine with me,” Stowe said. “That’s long enough.”

Stowe began working summers before starting high school when Proctor was still new — the dining hall was built in 1959.

“And then I just kind of stayed on,” he said. “Went into the service for a couple years, came back … and the rest is history.” Stowe’s friend Charlie Sargent joined the kitchen after high school, working with Stowe in a back room then called “the meat shop,” where all the meat was processed. Today, Sargent is the Purchasing

Manager for dining services and still works alongside Stowe, 39 years later. The two share an office outside the Proctor bakery.

Campus Editor-in-Chief Kyle Finck ’14 and I arrived at 7:00 a.m. last Friday to speak with Stowe. It felt very early to us, but Stowe had been there since five and had already baked corn muffins with cranberries, cooked the filling for the berry cobbler for dinner and put double chocolate chip cookies in the oven. He took us with him to wash the 60-gallon pot from the berry cobbler, called a trunion because the whole thing can tilt to pour out whatever is inside. Stowe wielded a hose to wash out the enormous pot: “See, this is just like home!”

According to Stowe, 99.9 percent of the breads and desserts at Proctor are baked the same day that they are served.

On this Friday, he and Jim Logan, another baker, worked alone to prep and bake everything between the two of them, although most days the staff totals four. On the busiest days, Stowe arrives at work at 4:00 a.m.

Logan was pulling the first pans of double chocolate cookies out of the oven when we walked over. They would end up doing 30 to 40 sheet pans, totaling between 12,000 and 16,000 cookies.

Years ago, the dining hall used ready-made cookie plugs. “But these cookies are made from scratch,” said Stowe, “And I assume the kids say they’re ok.”

Stowe would guess that today 95 percent of the baked goods are made from scratch.

“We’re lucky,” I said.

“I’d like to think so,” said Stowe.

Everything gets baked in an oven that fits four cookie sheets across on four shelves, which rotate inside the oven. An alarm and a strobe light, inserted when two hearing-impaired bakers worked in the kitchen several years ago, go off when the cookies are ready, but Stowe says you can tell when they’re almost done by the smell.

Only once that he remembers did the oven start to smell too strongly, when Stowe forgot to take out one of the four racks of biscuits, but they weren’t too hard to send out anyway — luckily, because the dining hall needs every pan that gets baked.

The biggest disaster in Stowe’s memory (which might give some insight into how smoothly the bakery runs) was a cabinet of diplomat cream for Napolean’s that he was wheeling into the cooler at the end of a busy week when a wheel caught, and the whole thing tipped on its side.

“All this diplomat cream — inside, it was terrible. But I was lucky enough that what I had made, there was enough to carry us through.” The diplomat cream was just a bit thinner that day.

The kitchen has changed pretty drastically since Stowe first arrived. For one thing, there isn’t a meat shop anymore; all the meat arrives pre-processed, like what you’d find at a grocery store. When Stowe started, the menus consisted of meat, potatoes and a vegetable every day, with some sort of baked good and either fruit cocktail or, on two days of the week, ice cream for dessert.

During the time of the hearing-impaired bakers, all the hotdog and hamburger buns where baked from scratch — “just murder” on the two bakers. They also made their own yoghurt, jams and jellies, in addition to all the breads, rolls, and desserts.

“These guys were pretty much nonstop, you know,” said Stowe. “I guess that’s where I got some of my work ethic from, was watching these guys. I mean I don’t hold a candle to what these guys did!”

The two bakers worked in Proctor for “the longest time.” Stowe still misses them. “They were a good bunch to work with.” When they left, the economy was tanking, and the bakery had to do with what they had, so Stowe moved up to head baker. Stowe describes himself as pretty resistant to change, “but I guess there isn’t any reason I should be, because the only thing constant about food service is change. It’s, I mean, change here and change there,” said Stowe, “so I guess that’s it.”

Stowe looks forward to a small change to the routine this week: “I’ll be on vacation!” He will take a few days off to sugar his maple trees with his wife and grandchildren. “When you’re a sugar-maker,” he said, “you have to take off when the sap’s running or you miss the boat.”

Of the bigger change looming in this coming May, Stowe said “I think you have to embrace it and go with it.” He is looking forward to “the quiet times” in his retirement.

“I mean, some days its o.k. in here and other days it’s like … the noise. I think the older you get, the more you don’t like it,” said Stowe. “Not that I’m ancient, I guess.”

He and his wife plan to travel, if not this year then the next. “We went out and purchased an RV, so we’re definitely hitting the road at some point,” he said. “We’ll do summer around here and then expand and go further and further. We’d like to travel and see the country some, see what it’s all about.” Stowe’s dream would be to travel across Asia, into the Black Sea, and then into Europe along rivers.

It will certainly be different, though, not to spend each morning with his colleagues in the Proctor bakery after 49 years.

“You know, to work this many years next to somebody, you know what they’re thinking, and they know what you think,” said Stowe. “I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but nonetheless … that will be missed.”