Hundreds of likes, comments and shares rolled in on social media – it was clear that Beulah Levy Ledner is nowhere near forgotten.
A post looking back at the St. Rose native’s life by local historian Jeff Goad, who runs a Facebook page detailing “Louisiana’s Hidden Gems and Treasures,” drew more than 4,000 interactions, the comments overwhelmingly praising both the famous baker’s dessert dishes and demeanor.
The daughter of Hungarian-Jewish immigrants Abraham Levy and Emma Moritz, Ledner was born in St. Rose on Jan. 5, 1894. She learned how to bake from her mother and it wasn’t long before she followed in her footsteps. In the early 1920s, she began baking out of her home kitchen. Soon, the family would move those operations into a new home on Lowerline Street in uptown New Orleans, operating under the name “Mrs. Charles Ledner’s Superior Home Baking.” Her treats were tasty – and they became a hit, with local students and teachers alike at Tulane and Newcomb colleges spreading the word that her items weren’t something to be missed.
Her popularity grew, and so did her business as she opened her first bakery on Claiborne. The signature item was Ledner’s Doberge Cake, her invention and something that cemented her legacy. The cakes adapted a Hungarian dish – the dobos tort – for local tastes. The dobos tort was a dessert made up of many thin layers of cake with filling between the layers that is frosted and decorated.
The Doberge cake, conversely, brought a twist to the dish. Ledner changed the name from dobos to doberge with the idea in mind that New Orleanians enjoyed French pastries. She replaced the buttercream filling of the Dobos cake with a custard filling and iced the cakes with buttercream and a thin layer of fondant – multiple thin layers of cake alternating with desert pudding. Often the cakes are made with half chocolate pudding and half lemon pudding, and are normally made with six or more layers.
The bakery was a true family business. While Ledner handled the baking, her children would fold cake boxes and make deliveries. Her son, Albert, designed and built a new building and a machine to mass produce sheet cakes while utilizing his mother’s recipes.
The bakery continued to grow – and it continued to move, operating from locations on Canal Street and South Claiborne Avenue. But the effects of World War II were not kind to the bakery business, and she ultimately sold the business to the Gambino family – and Gambino’s Bakery has been an enduring local tradition ever since. Her Doberge cake, to this day, remains a popular item there. Before it was named Gambino’s Bakery, in fact, the bakery remained named the Beulah Ledner Bakery for three years.
Ledner wasn’t through, though. After two years on the sidelines, she opened a new bakery on Metairie Road in Jefferson Parish. As it did before, Ledner’s business grew and it expanded to a larger location in Metairie in 1970.
Ultimately, she soared in the bakery business for more than 50 years. Upon her retirement in 1981, she sold a business for the second time, this time forming what is today Maurice’s French Pastries in Metairie.
Ledner passed away in 1988, at the age of 94, due to a long battle with illness.
The year prior to her passing, her abilities were further immortalized through the publishing of a cookbook, Maxine Wolchansky’s Let’s Bake with Beulah Ledner, filled with her recipes.
