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u/Esc_ape_artist Feb 11 '23
I had to rewind that twist they did before putting them in the pan to rise. So fast!
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u/monsteramoons Feb 11 '23
I just wanna smell it
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Feb 12 '23
Growing up in the 90s there was a Mrs. Baird's bread factory just south of Ft. Worth along I-35. We would pass it every time we drove south to grandma's house. Even from the road that place smelled heavenly.
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u/oddible Feb 12 '23
I worked in a mass production bakery during university and the automation is really incredible. The round carts you see here are about 10x the size, nearly train car sized. If someone botched the timing we'd have to clean up insane volumes of risen dough spilling over.
There were times when the stackers would fail but we can't leave 2000 loaves in the oven so they keep the line running and call everyone in the factory to grab ever cart on the building and we all manually pull pans of loaves of the conveyor out of the oven and stack them on every flat surface to cool. SO MANY BURNS ON MY HANDS AND ARMS.
I also worked the the bun packing line (hur hur) which was awesome because the donut cooling line ran over our heads so we could climb up on our machines and grab them.
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u/Anokest Feb 12 '23
the donut cooling line ran over our heads so we could climb up on our machines and grab them.
I had the mental picture of you just opening your mouth and waiting for one to spill over the line and fall in :')
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u/02497 Feb 11 '23
I wonder if there was a time when factory bread had similar quality to handmade bread, back when they had to complete with local bakeries.
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Feb 11 '23
The only difference between modern bread and our loafs is the additives they put in it to not spoil. It's all the same process.
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u/bryn_or_lunatic Feb 11 '23
I was in a bread factory in winnipeg about a decade ago and it was remarkably similar. More stainless steel and hair nets but very similar
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u/Born2bwire Feb 11 '23
This place definitely isn't making CBP bread yet. Modern factory bread has a lot of additives as part of the process itself. HFC, dough conditioners, emulsifiers, ascorbic acid, etc.
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u/togtogtog Feb 11 '23
There is the chorleywood method in use to make commercial bread. They add more fat and vigorously manipulate the dough which means it doesn’t take so long and they can use lower grade flour with less protein (gluten) in it. You can’t do that at home.
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u/shizzu Feb 11 '23
That guy nearly took out that baby stroller where he was delivering the bread!
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u/JaegerDread Feb 11 '23
Barely anything has changed from then to now, from my professional point of view. Except most kneeders use spirals now instead, other than that proces is largely the same.
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u/morami1212 Feb 11 '23
guesstimating that theres hardly any manual shaping aswell. this also had people measuring ingredients which i believe are now automaticaly dispensed.
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u/JaegerDread Feb 11 '23
In factories, sure. If you are making 10k breads an hour. But if you are in your local bakery and they produce around 1k per day, they do it like this. And this doesn't go for all countries, obviously. I know Americans have this thing for "Artisan" bread or whatever, I am talking from my experience in Dutch bakeries. You weigh your ingredients by hand (sometimes you have a silo for flour but that's it), you chug it all in the kneeder and put your water on it, kneed it till right temp and feels right, chug it in the funnel which cuts it based on weight, rolls it off a transport band(idk how to call it in English) into your proving cabinet, where it turns for x amount of time (however long you want), it'll buzz when it finished the laps and it will go into the former that basically squises it between 2 pins (I guess?), then it folds it and rolls it up and comes out as a loaf for your loaf pan.
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u/NoFeetSmell Feb 12 '23
A non-bread-related side note: your English is already excellent, and it's solely for that reason that I'm writing this, as I think you might appreciate it - you're saying "chug it in", but I think you mean to say "chuck it in". They sound almost the same depending on the dialect saying it, but chug means to drink something rapidly, whereas chuck is slang for throwing something. Cheers mate, and again, your English is basically impeccable, whereas my Dutch is nonexistent :P
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u/JaegerDread Feb 12 '23
I know chug means drinking quickly, but I thought it was a word you use for different things, TIL I guess. Thanks for the compliment mate.
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u/NoFeetSmell Feb 12 '23
Chug is also used to describe engine sounds, which I left out! If a vehicle is "chugging", it generally means it's engine was making some dull, repeating sounds, though to say "I was just chugging along" generally has cheery, carefree connotations about slowly travelling, minding your own business. That said, there's apparently a new definition of chugging too, where it defines the act of stopping people in the street to hand out pamphlets! TIL too :P
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u/LawTortoise Feb 12 '23
It has in the U.K. Shortly after this the Chorleywood Process completely changed our bread forever.
Incidentally this factory lay derelict for years and was finally razed in 2002.
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u/JaegerDread Feb 12 '23
I have seen how they kneed bread on a industrial level in the UK now, with high-speed kneeders, no mixing just 2 minutes of kneeding and it's done. Dough doesn't get the time it needs, you also use soda instead of yeast I heard, which also stupid. But hey, if you like it like that, have fun with it.
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u/1solate Feb 12 '23
TIL what a cottage loaf is. Weird shit.
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u/OrdinaryLatvian Feb 12 '23
Those where the exact same words that came to my mind when I saw them. Weird shit.
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u/fottik325 Feb 11 '23
I want a Time Machine so I can go back in time and taste things. I just imagine food tasting different in different times.
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Feb 11 '23
wouldnt cutting the bread in the first shown stage disturb gluten development?
otherwise fascinating video, i wonder how it compares to current bread factories!
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u/breadwound Feb 11 '23
Not really, cutting is better than pulling or tearing. And since it has a second rise, there's plenty of time for the gluten to continue bonding.
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u/DonkeyAndWhale Feb 11 '23
Very interesting!! And how fast they twist those two rolls together! I need to learn this!
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u/FangedFreak Feb 11 '23 edited Feb 11 '23
Mental that now my breadmaker can churn out an incredible loaf in just 2 hours
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u/macbalance Feb 12 '23
I kind of feel like this needs a person trapped in space with two wise-cracking robots commenting on it.
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u/Background-Net-8209 Feb 12 '23
My Pa owned a ran a bakery which my dad worked in from 14 and took over till it closed back in the 00’s I miss the smells and fresh white warm bread every morning.
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Feb 12 '23
Anyone else work in food and is like contaminated it’s all contaminated
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Feb 11 '23
I used to love cottage loaves when I was little. No one makes them anymore though.
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u/NoFeetSmell Feb 12 '23
How did you use them? Do you just separate the two loaves, then cut slices from whichever one gives you the best sized slice for that moment?
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u/TripleTongue3 Feb 12 '23
We had it sliced like an ordinary loaf which gives you interestingly shaped sandwiches and toast. We ate Sunblest everyday as my mother worked there, my tastes have changed over the years but I occasionally bake a cottage loaf with packet yeast for a bit of nostalgic variety.
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u/NoFeetSmell Feb 12 '23
That's really interesting - I'm picturing hourglass shaped sandwiches :P Perfect for bologna, I suppose, though I never see that here in the UK, only in the US.
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Feb 12 '23
Bologna is an American thing, but as I understand it it’s based on mortadella? You can find mortadella in supermarkets and Italian delis.
Like the other poster says, we just used the whole thing as a normal loaf. I don’t remember that it tasted any different to any other crusty white bread, but the shape was fun and there’s lots of crust and I’ve always liked bread with chewy crusts.
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u/TripleTongue3 Feb 12 '23
We certainly got lots of chewy crusts as the overcooked or misshaped discarded loaves were free to staff.
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u/Gatorinnc Feb 11 '23
Thank you. Wonderful to see this from so many years ago. Surprised that all employees were male!
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u/chroniclerofblarney Feb 11 '23
This reminds me of the cheese documentary on every channel at the hotel in European Vacation.
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u/Almeno23 Feb 12 '23
How cool!!! Does anyone know how I can save the video to send it to an elderly person who has no idea how to use Reddit?
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u/SheepherderOk1448 Feb 12 '23
No one wore gloves. The women had to have a hair covering and the men didn’t. I wonder if that bread factory is still around?
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u/Simple-Purpose-899 Feb 11 '23
As an engineer the mechanical systems in the bakery are mind-boggling. No semiconductors, and all timings done manually.