As the heavy metal door at the back of Kutz opened slowly, the four of us were immediately hit with a blast of hot air infused with the crisp scent of pastries taken straight from an oven.Unbeknownst to most students, the sweets eaten in every caf and cafeteria on campus are baked at Brandeis' own bakery in the basement of Kutz. Anyone who has waited in line at the registrar's office and noticed the faint, yet intoxicating scent of freshly baked cookies probably guessed that Brandeis was hiding a bakery somewhere in the building. We are happy to report that the much-mythologized Brandeis bakery does actually exist, and it is part of a dying breed.

After taking a moment to absorb the aroma in the newfound oasis, our quartet of Justice reporters and photographers ventured wide-eyed into the underground wonderland. Our tour guide was head baker "Murph" Lemasa, jovial and smiling as he described his passion for baking and explained the intricacies of his nocturnal responsibilities.

Lemasa was proud to report that Brandeis is one of the few remaining universities around the country that maintains a "from-scratch "bakery. Lemasa said that running such a bakery on campus is expensive, Lemasa said. He added that while buying pre-made baked goods from a supplier might save money, it would also sacrifice taste.

Eighty percent of the treats from the Brandeis bakery are made from scratch. This doesn't mean simply opening a box of cake mix and adding some eggs. Rather, it means going through the labor-intensive process of adding and mixing each individual ingredient and then watching the oven intently to check that the goods come out at just the right time. In the Kutz bakery, everything from peanut butter cookies to carrot cake to rare treats like almond cookies for the Chinese New Year, are made this way. The remaining 20 percent of pastries not made from scratch consist of hard-to-produce items like croissants and turnovers that are shipped frozen to the bakery and then baked there later. Lemasa remarked that making every last pastry from scratch would "raise Brandeis tuition by 30 percent."

Within the bakery is a separate room for kosher baked goods, all parve (non-dairy). After a hiatus of many years, Brandeis restored its kosher bakery just three years ago, said Lemasa. Good kosher baking products are very expensive and hard to find, he explained, as he showed us a brochure of some new kosher items he plans to order.

The bakery begins production each day at 1 a.m. When most students are keeping warm in their dorm rooms Lemasa is hard at work in the bakery, ensuring that students and faculty will not be left without their morning poppy seed muffins.

When we arrived at the bakery at 1:30 a.m. last Thursday, Lemasa was already busy, boiling water and prepping croissants to be baked. With the precision of a surgeon, he slit the middle of each croissant to shape them into crescents. Still only delicate bundles of dough, the croissants seemed pale miniatures of those we knew we would view in the morning through the glass at Java City.

The bakery stays open through the night, making an immense number of assorted treats that are shipped out around campus at 6:30 a.m. so that everything is fresh for breakfast. After five hours of sweating next to a massive oven, Lemasa usually takes a lunch break around 6 a.m., although he confessed that he had never taken a "true" lunch break and normally just gets off of his feet for 10 or 15 minutes.

Lemasa told us that he savors the night hours.

"There is no one around to drive you crazy," he said, explaining that at night, he can be more productive. He likes to go home at about 10 a.m., so the last few hours of work are always a time crunch.

At the heart of the bakery rests an imposing oven responsible for all the non-kosher pastries at Brandeis. The oven can reach temperatures up to 450 degrees and provides the only source of heat for the bakery. Because of its size, the oven takes about an hour to fully heat up. When we stepped into the bakery at 1:30 a.m., the oven had only been turned on for half an hour, but already the warmth emanating from it was nearly unbearable. Lemasa, though, in his starched white labcoat, seemed unphased by the heat.

This was no ordinary oven with a door and a few wire shelves. Instead, the oven had one large shelf that rotated constantly, carrying its treasures in and out of sight. During our conversation, Lemasa set a loaf of cranberry bread up to bake. Soon afterwards, during one of the oven's rotations, we caught a glimpse of the bread, now tinted gold.

After our stint by the oven, we followed Lemassa into one of the kitchen's three cavernous walk-in freezers. This chill, though even colder than the air outside, was not the same bitter cold as before; instead it was sweetly chocolate-scented and inviting. We found ourselves surrounded by tall shelves of frozen dough, cake, cookies and brownies. All of these things are baked and then immediately frozen to retain freshness until they are ready to be reheated and sold.

Lemasa also proudly showed off two gigantic Hobart batter mixers, the smaller of which costs $13,000. It is with good reason that the bakery has such an impressive array of equipment. Lemasa and his crew must keep up with the pastry demands of the entire Brandeis campus-students, faculty,staff and visitors included. Combined, that is over 4,000 apple pie-craving mouths to satisfy.

This is no small task and it produces some staggering figures. Lemasa estimates that the bakery goes through some 800-900 pounds of flour a week, 150 pounds of cookie dough a day and between 10,000 and 12,000 eggs in any given week.

Anyone who frequents Usdan is sure to notice the popularity of the bakery's most sought-after product, those big, round, chewy cookies in multiple favors: chocolate chip, peanut butter, brownie chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin and others. Matthew Louik '05 echoed the sentiments of many students when he said, "I find the chocolate chip cookies delectable."

"We make cookies constantly. We can't make enough," Lemasa said. To ensure that the cookies taste the same each day, a single baker is in charge of making all the cookies at Brandeis. Because the bakery only employs three bakers, this means that almost a third of the bakery's output is devoted to cookies.

All of the cookie recipes, as well as most of the bakery's other recipes, are Lemasa originals. He told us that he has worked as a baker for 43 years. He came to Brandeis 17 years ago when the bakery was still independent. He said that in the past, students used to visit him late at night in the hopes of scoring some cookies for themselves. More daring students would sneak into the back of the bakery (the door is locked nowadays) and steal entire trays of cookies.

Lemasa explained to us why the bakery is located in a seemingly random building, a question that puzzles many who know of its existence. Kutz once held Brandeis' first student dining hall. The bakery's current home in the basement used to be the kitchen for the dining hall; the previous bakery was just "an oven upstairs," Lemasa said. Aramark assumed control of the bakery in 2000, but they still allow Lemasa to use most of his own recipes.

Lemasa's recipes, however, do not cater to those trying to eat a healthy diet. While the Atkins diet and other low-carb diets are hurting the business of bakeries across the nation, Lemasa said he is not worried. He pointed out to us that low-carb diets were the craze 20 or 25 years ago as well, and that in his view, the current diet trend is just a fad.

"If you stop eating everything, you'll die," he said.

Lemasa said that he is also not too keen on low-fat bakery items. With a mocking attitude, he showed us a binder of low-fat recipes compiled by an Aramark representative sent to Johnson and Wales University to research healthier alternatives.

"The fat is what makes the taste of food," Lemasa said. If this is true, that fat equals flavor, than the treats from Brandeis' bakery must be virtual sticks of butter. And as long as flavor is in vogue, the bakery in Kutz should have no worries about its future.