Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/197412
Hunger Game Making and baking the starchy staple of school lunches in Jeferson County. A meal's throw pillow, the roll should add comfort and purpose to a plate — sopping up spagheti sauce, providing rest in between tearing chicken from the bone. You may remember your school's roll. Maybe it was a sweet, yeasty number that always tasted beter a litle under-baked. At the Jeferson County Public Schools' Nutrition Services Center, a 69,000-square-foot facility near the Fairgrounds, a handful of the center's nearly 70 workers start making rolls long before the sun comes up. Six-hundred pounds of sticky dough, made from 62 percent whole-wheat four, swirls in a mixing bowl the size of a small hot tub. Workers dump the dough into a contraption that spits out two-ounce balls onto a conveyer belt. Last year, in compliance with new federal school lunch regulations, JCPS replaced some four with potato fakes, reducing the amount of total grains ofered in a school lunch. This created a fater (but still tasty!) bread. But that only lasted a year. With fewer grains, districts had a hard time meeting USDA caloric minimums for a meal (750 to 850 for high school lunch). This year, the old rolls are back! All 210 delicious calories. The conveyer belt is programmed to place 42 rolls per baking sheet. Then it's onto a rack. You should smell it in here! It's a carboholic's dream. JCPS serves 61,000 lunches daily. (As well as roughly 31,000 breakfasts.) So workers must 64 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.13