Original subtitles

Here in Britain we love our daily bread,

munching our way through 12 million loaves every single day.

Believe it or not, come August.

the green shoots in this field

will provide enough wheat

to make 300,000 loaves of bread.

[Cherry] From field to factory,

it's a non-stop processing line, but how do they do it?

We've come to West Bromwich

to one of the biggest bakeries in the country to find out.

[lively music]

[Gregg] I'm Gregg Wallace and

I've been given exclusive access

to reveal the secrets behind this epic production line.

Rolling it up like a cigar and cutting it into four,

and that's the professional secret?

That's the professional secret.

[Gregg] I'm going to follow the entire process over 24 hours

to show you the amazing technology

that goes into making the perfect loaf every time.

That may be the most incredible thing I've seen

since I got here.

[Cherry] I'm Cherry Healey

and I'll come face-to-face

with the mindboggling machines...

I can feel it on my face.

...that are working around the clock

to provide enough flour to bake for a nation.

That is insane.

[Gregg] Along the way Historian Ruth Goodman

will reveal the hidden killers

that used to lurk in our bread.

This place just gets weirder and weirder.

You'll never look at a loaf of bread the same way again.

This is the incredible story

of the factories that feed Britain.

[lively music]

[Gregg] Allied Bakeries in West Bromwich

is one of the largest bread makers in the country.

Each week this one factory

produces 1.3 million muffins and up to five million rolls.

But the heart of the factory

is the giant bread production line

which bakes, bags and dispatches

1.5 million loaves every week.

And tonight I'm gonna follow every stage of that process

by helping them bake the best selling white

and wholemeal mixed loaf in Britain.

But it's not about baking one of them;

it's about baking 140 of them perfectly

every single minute.

Before I can get anywhere near a mixer,

we need to get our ingredients together,

starting with the flour.

420 tons of it stored in these giant silos

trucked in from mills across the country.

[Cherry] Every year over two million hectares of wheat

are grown in the UK in a land area the size of Wales.

Because of our climate wheat can only be planted once a year

so the annual harvest in August has to provide enough wheat

to feed the nation for the year ahead.

It's kept in stores around Britain

and then trucked to mills like this,

the Coronet Mill in Manchester,

and this is where your bread begins.

Right, let's see what's inside this truck, ready?

Around 10 varieties of wheat

are grown for bread making in the UK.

A mill will buy a selection of them and mix them together.

For Manager, Steve Britton,

this is the key to making the perfect flour.

How much of this comes through your mill every day?

Well, we bring in up to 50 wheat vehicles a day.

About 6,000 tons a week.

- 6,000 tons a week? - Huh-uh.

[upbeat music]

The wheat could have been sitting in storage

for up to a year, so before a truckload

is allowed anywhere near the mill itself

a probe sucks up a sample and sends it to the onsite lab.

The truck has to wait

while they test the quality of the wheat

and check for any impurities.

Twenty minutes later, they get the green light,

then the wheat is cleaned

before embarking on a violent journey

through a six-mile long network of pipes,

which race it from silos to machinery

all over the 10 story mill

at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour.

[Steve] This is where we will store that clean wheat

and it's basically filling up these silos as we speak.

- I can hear it. - Yeah it's in-

All going through these tubes.

Okay, well open the door and have a look.

Oh wow!

Oh my goodness.

Coronet Mill combines various types of wheat

to make over a hundred different kinds of flour,

each for a specific product.

From doughnuts to pasties, to bagels to cakes and bread.

But to unlock the flour inside a kernel of wheat,

first you have to take the whole thing apart.

[Steve] All wheat is basically the same.

It's made up of three constituent parts.

It's got the bran layer on the outside.

It's got the white endosperm and it's also got the germ.

[Cherry] In a wholemeal bread the flour used

has combined all these elements

as they use the whole of the grain.

But in a white flour it's just the endosperm,

this white central part they're after.

The wheat is soaked in water and left for up to 24 hours

to loosen the outer shell.

Then it's ground through steel rollers,

which shear open the kernels

and separate the bran from the endosperm.

So this is after the first time it's been ground.

[Steve] It is, so what I need to do now

is separate it into its constituent parts.

So I need to separate the bran from the endosperm.

So what we do is we sieve it.

[jazzy music]

I can feel it on my face.

That's insane.

The Coronet Mill's sifting floor

is a disconcerting maze of seven giant sieves

that work 24 hours a day

processing more than a tanker load of flour every hour.

[jazzy music]

The crushed wheat kernels

pass through increasingly fine sieves,

which removes more and more of the coarse material

releasing a small amount of flour each time.

This coarse material is sent on to yet more steel rollers

to be reground and the process is repeated

again and again and again.

Until eventually.

- Flour. - Flour.

Really soft and smooth flour.

Our finished flour is now ready to be trucked to the bakery.

Flour dust is combustible,

and in a confined space can create an explosive environment

where any electrical spark could ignite it.

So the Mill has to take great care while they're loading.

The truck has to be earthed to prevent any static build up

while powerful air ventilators

prevent the dust from escaping.

How much flour is now going through this funnel

into this truck?

This is a 28-ton delivery now.

And how many loaves of bread will that produce?

[Steve] About 60,000 loaves.

[Cherry] 60,000 loaves of bread from this one truck?

[Steve] Yeah.

And how many trucks of flour

do you send out of your mill every day?

We're producing a tanker-load of flour every hour.

- And is that 24 hours? - Yes.

- That's a lot of toast. - It is.

That is now on its way to the bakery in West Bromwich

where in just 24 hours the contents of that truck

will become the bread on your table.

[machines whirring]

[Gregg] The flour supply is the lifeblood of this bakery.

They rely on it arriving in vast quantities every day

for everything they make.

And before I head in to start baking,

I need to offload that flour Cherry has been milling

and find out how exactly

you get 28 tons of white powder out of a truck.

That's the first challenge for Driver Tony Jarman.

- Can I help? - You can, yeah.

I don't wanna appear stupid,

but flour is a light dusty thing.

How do you get it out of an enormous vat?

We pressurize the tank using a land-based blower.

- You blow it out? - Yeah, we blow it.

We pressurize the tank and blow it out.

I came here to see the flour unloaded

and now I feel like a fireman.

[machine whirring]

This is where the non-stop process

of large-scale bread making begins.

Hey-hey, it's trembling through my arm.

It's incredible to think that just 24 hours from now

this flour I'm pumping off this truck

will be a loaf on a supermarket shelf.

Where's this going?

It's going into the silos above.

[Gregg] This one bakery takes in close to

1,000 tons of flour a week.

And they use white and wholemeal flour

for their Kingsmill 50/50 loaf.

That's the loaf they're making now, in fact every hour

they're making over eight and a half thousand of them.

And just like baking at home,

the first step is getting your ingredients together,

and here that's all being done by computer

under the watchful eye of General Manager John Jackson.

This is the fun bit, right?

This is the bit where we start making the dough.

So what we have here is the flour line

coming right from the silos.

Here?

[John] There it is.

And it's delivering the flour

at about two kilos a second into a holding bin here

ready to drop into the mixer when the mixer calls for it.

[Gregg] This high-tech mixer

can automatically call on ingredients

from all over the factory.

Right now flour's being delivered

directly from the silos outside,

while the nearby ingredients store room

is also pumping in the other dry ingredients

we'll need to make our loaf.

- We've got Kibble. - Kibble?

- Kibble. - What is Kibble?

Kibble is like wheat bran that gives you texture.

Hang on a minute, hang on a minute.

I make bread, flour, yeast, salt.

We add it to give it a bit of texture

particularly to our wholemeal products.

Tell me about soya, that surprises me.

Soya, soya, we add soya, which enriches the process

and gives a brighter crumb.

- It makes the bread whiter? - Yes it does, yeah.

- Is that right? - That's right.

I'm really excited; I've never used one of these.

That is immense.

Ready?

[Gregg] Despite all these ingredients,

there's one star player at the heart of bread making,

a living organism.

Is that your yeast?

Yeah that's our yeast.

That is creamed, fast acting baker's yeast.

The yeast that I use at home is a solid.

Yeah we have it in liquid form

so that we can bring it in by tanker.

[Gregg] How many tankers come in

to supply you with liquid yeast?

- [John] About two a week. - [Gregg] Two whole?

[John] Two full tankers a week, yeah.

I'm amazed you go through that much.

I had no idea.

This is the secret ingredient, without this no bread ever.

[John] That's right.

How much do you love this jar of liquid?

It's absolutely essential.

[Gregg] But what exactly is yeast,

and why is it so essential?

To find out I've come to the Norfolk Countryside

to meet Scientist, Doctor Ian Roberts.

So why am I out in the middle of a forest?

This is a really good place to find yeast.

It's a microscopic fungus

related to mushrooms and toadstools,

and it's a living thing and this is a living environment.

Where is the yeast?

It's everywhere, it's all around us,

on leaves, branches, soil, bark of oak trees

is a particularly good place to find it.

And indeed it's on us, on our skin.

You're not kidding me, are you?

No, it's everywhere.

[contemplative music]

[Gregg] Yeast's are some of the most

successful organisms on earth.

These ancient fungi have been with us for millions of years,

they live all around us from the air we breathe

to the bark of this tree.

So how do you make tons and tons of the stuff

when each organism is microscopic?

I've come to the Lallemand Factory in Suffolk,

one of the latest yeast producers in the country

to find out.

There are six massive fermenters

which are cultivating yeast 24 hours a day.

Martin Perling is Operations Director.

How much yeast is in one of those?

In each one of those tanks

by the time we've finished growing the yeast,

there'll be 30,000 kilograms of yeast.

Enough to ultimately bake 1.2 million loaves of bread.

And how much did you start with?

We start with .1 gram from a test tube.

Hang on; hang on, how long does that take?

That will take us 4 days.

[laughs] That's not possible.

The wonders of living organisms

are that they replicate themselves

by doubling their numbers

every three hours in the case of yeast.

And if you do the mathematics, over the four days

that we have the yeast in those fermenters,

they will increase by 35 million times.

Mate, that is the maddest thing.

[dramatic music]

One way they keep the yeast happy

is by feeding them vast amounts of sugar

through this complex network of pipes.

As they grow and multiply,

the yeast cells get through 42 tons of sugar syrup

known as molasses in just 16 hours.

Once the yeast has multiplied enough to fill the tanks

it's dehydrated and then compressed into bricks

ready for delivery.

That's a beautiful thing.

- It is. - It's like a marble finish,

that's a really beautiful thing.

[Martin] And those are all living organisms in there.

A living thing?

We also produce a dried yeast for home baking.

[Gregg] These organisms are so amazingly resilient,

they can even survive being completely dried out.

That is dry and stable, and in this form,

yeast will keep for two years

whereas in that form it has a shelf life of about 30 days.

This has got to be one of the most adaptable organisms

the human race has ever found.

[Martin] It is and man has learnt to adapt it

to his requirements.

Now that truck is about to leave,

and that has got enough yeast on it

to make over 600,000 loaves of bread.

600,000, but that's not even a fifth of the bread

that we consume in Great Britain every day.

Gobsmacking!

Back at the West Brom Bakery

yeast has now been pumped into storage tanks.

[soft rock music]

And then, just three minutes after the flour delivery,

it's all combined in the mixer.

We're almost ready to start making bread.

But first I need to add one final group of ingredients

known as conditioners.

Tell me what to do.

Grab yourself one of these, take the lid off,

put the lid on the side.

[Gregg] A mix of vitamin C and various enzymes and emulsifiers,

which along with a high-speed mixer

allow them to bake bread at a speed

impossible in your kitchen at home.

At home now, I've added the yeast to the flour,

I've now got cling film over the bowl

and I'm leaving it to rise.

[Martin] If we were to use the old method,

we would have bowls of dough all round here waiting.

We use something called

the Chorleywood bread-making process.

That was developed in the early 1960s.

[Gregg] At the heart of this Chorleywood process

is a special mixer which uses controlled pressure

and emits energy to precisely manage

the size of the air bubbles in the dough.

Which means every loaf is practically identical.

It also means that a process that would take you 25 minutes

of mixing and kneading at home

can all be done here in a fraction of that time.

So how long does it take to mix the whole thing up then?

- Just three minutes. - You're kidding.

For the actual mixing itself it's just three minutes long.

Can I get in there and have a look?

Yeah.

[Gregg] Every stage of the process

has to be precisely monitored,

including the temperature of the dough ball

to ensure the yeast has the perfect environment to grow.

[John] And we're looking for 28 degrees plus or minus one.

[Gregg] Too hot and the dough would rise too quickly.

Too cold and they'd end up with a dense flat loaf.

Now it looks like a bread dough.

[John] That's is yeah, yeah.

[Gregg] How many of these do you do a day?

- 20 an hour. - 20 an hour?

And you get about 350 loaves to a mix.

[electronic music]

Is this the dough I've made?

Yeah, this is the dough you've made

and we've cut it into the right weight pieces

and this dough piece now won't stop moving

for the next three-and-a-half hours

till we actually drop it in a bag.

I can't be the only person in Britain

that finds this very therapeutic,

watching enormous dough balls

just floating away up into the horizon.

[calm music]

[John] Now what we do next, Gregg,

we put it through a rounder

and shape it into dough piece

and once they've got it into the right shape,

we need to let it relax so that we can then mold it

and shape it before we put it in the tin.

- -How long's it gotta relax? - About 30 seconds.

Is that why you make the conveyor belt so long?

[John] That's exactly right, yeah.

It's like all the energy and heat

that goes into a piece of beef,

it's like bringing that out of the oven

and letting that rest.

- Exactly the same. - The same process?

Yeah, it's the same process.

I'm getting quite attached to this dough ball.

After they've relaxed for 30 seconds,

the dough balls are almost ready to be left to prove.

But first they go through one surprising extra step.

You've got it rolled up like a pancake.

[John] Yeah we roll it up like a pancake.

[Gregg] Why would you do that?

[John] It's all about

developing the structure of the dough,

and we cut it in four,

and turn the grain through 90 degrees

to give the slice of bread a stronger texture,

allowing you to butter it without ripping

it all into holes.

Is that it, is that my four separate bits?

That's the four separate pieces

that I've actually molded together

in the proving and baking process inside the tin.

I wouldn't notice this would I, in a sliced loaf?

No because on a sliced loaf,

the slices will actually cut through that

and you'll not see that.

Mate, this is nothing like making bread at home,

let me tell you, nothing like it.

What would happen if we didn't roll it up,

didn't cut it into four,

and just put the dough into a baking tin?

It would look exactly the same, a square loaf.

However, it would be more susceptible to ripping

if you actually buttered it.

I'll show you.

This is the loaf we made earlier,

and we've four-pieced it as you can see.

And this is one that we haven't,

that we made especially for you today

so you could actually see the difference.

And that's the standard 50/50?

That is, we make 40,000 of these every day,

and we don't make any of those.

And you reckon it'll spread better.

I do.

[upbeat music]

Do you wanna bet on it?

- Spread betting? - Spread betting, yes.

It does spread ridiculously well, it does, right.

Swap 'em over.

- It's tearing. - It's tearing here, yes.

[Gregg laughing]

That's mad.

That's nuts. Look at that.

Everything depends on you rolling it up like a cigar

and cutting it into four and that's the professional secret?

And that's the professional secret.

For centuries bread has been really important to us,

not only in Britain's diet but in our culture.

- Hiya Ruth, how are you? - Hello.

[Ruth] So, I've come to meet Colin Lomax.

Lomax has a lifetime's experience of making

bread by hand.

Always think about using that part of my hand

and pushing it against the table, you'll get some friction.

[Ruth] He's going to show me how our love affair with bread

has risen through the centuries,

starting off with a medieval loaf.

It didn't look anything like the modern white loaf did it?

No, that's so true.

Let's just have a look at some rye bread,

and rye is what really the poor people had to eat

when wheat was too expensive to buy.

This is indeed the sort of texture

that I would expect from medieval bread.

Its quite dense; it's not very springy is it?

No.

If you've got to live on bread and water...

Which they did of course didn't they?

- Which they did. - Yeah.

Then this is about as good as it gets

but boy you have to chew it [laughs].

Workers' bread was generally made

from whatever was growing locally--

rye, barley and oats, which were sometimes mixed with wheat.

This produced loaves in various shades of brown.

If you were wealthy, you could treat yourself

to a loaf of white bread.

But pre-industrial white bread was quite different

from the sandwich loaves which we know today.

You probably can't see it from there,

but there are still flecks of brown particles in there.

But it made good bread.

[Ruth] Good for the gentry maybe, but not for the bakers.

The conditions in bakeries were terrible,

and most of the bakers had respiratory diseases.

As they were in amongst the dust all the time.

That's right, they worked terribly long hours,

and it really was kind of back-breaking work.

[Ruth] After 25 minutes in the oven,

it's time to check on our pre-industrial white loaf.

Look!

[Colin] All of our efforts. Fantastic.

[Ruth] Bread was so fundamental to society

that it became a symbol for social division.

When they were baked on the oven bottom

and you get this kind of dust,

then they used to slice the bottom off,

and that was oven bottom and the top bit was upper crust.

So the so-called rich people had the upper crust bit,

and the other people had the bottom.

Wow.

Now that does look like white bread.

It's sort of creamy white rather than white, white.

If you care to try a little piece of it.

Huh-uh.

And it should almost melt in your mouth;

it shouldn't be as chewy and as dense,

and you can see yourself eating that with a nice meal.

[Ruth] For the upper classes,

white bread was the height of refinement

in every sense of the word.

It wasn't until after the industrial revolution,

that it came within reach of the ordinary worker.

In the mid-19th Century cheap wheat

was imported from the prairies of North America,

and it was milled through steel rollers

creating a much finer product.

Can we have a little look at what white bread had become

by the end of the Victorian period?

[Colin] Okay, we'll just cut through that, inside a lovely-

- Oh my goodness. - Bright white loaf.

Let's go and have a look at that old white.

And I think this is very white in comparison to that.

[Colin] And essentially you put one hand on there

and one hand on there, and you can really feel-

Oh my goodness, there's a huge difference.

One sinks right in, the other one scarcely at all.

And our love affair with white bread just goes on and on.

Throughout history and through the checkouts,

the white loaf remains the nation's favorite.

[Gregg] My loaf is only 7 minutes old

but already it's been mixed, the dough balls have been cut

into the critically important four pieces,

and now it's just a short conveyor belt ride

to the prover.

[electronic music]

At home I'd put a little bit of oil in the bowl,

and I'd try and find somewhere dry and warm

like an airing cupboard.

That is just a giant airing cupboard right?

[John] It's a giant airing cupboard.

[Gregg] And how much bread have you got in there?

[John] About 7,000 loaves at any one time.

[Gregg] And what do you, you want it to double its size

in about an hour?

[John] At least double its size in about an hour, yes.

I could do that after a good lunch.

[John laughs]

[Gregg] Whether you're baking tens of thousands

of loaves in a factory

or a single loaf in your kitchen at home,

at this point the science is the same.

The prove is all about giving the live yeast

time to feed off the starch.

As it does, it produces bubbles of carbon dioxide,

which is what will give our loaf its structure.

Oh that's quite heavy, mate.

Right, so there.

[John] That's the dough we've made

straight from the mixer and four-pieced.

[Gregg] And there is the proven dough,

more than doubled the size...

I'd say almost triple the size.

Yeah, that's right.

[Gregg] But it's not enough just to create the bubbles,

the key is holding them in place

and that's where the elastic stretchy gluten comes in.

So the yeast is producing gas,

the gluten is holding it all in?

[John] In like a big net,

and when all that process has finished,

it creates like a soft, springy texture.

So, the yeast is, like, eating the sugar,

and then it's breaking wind on an enormous scale,

and then the gluten's trapping it all.

That's right.

That's the scientific way of describing it, yes.

- I'm right, aren't I? - You're right, yes.

[John] You have to put a lid on the bread or on the tin.

[Gregg] Why?

[John] Well, when it goes in the oven,

which is the next stage after here,

the yeast does a little bit of a jump

as it does it final proof,

and the lid stops it going too big.

And it also helps us to create that nice square loaf

to go in your toaster.

[Gregg] They thought of everything.

And now, one hour and 24 minutes

after the flour first arrived, it's time to start baking.

I'm guessing by the heat that this is the oven

and they're finally gonna get baked.

How many loaves of bread would you have in the oven

at any one time?

About three-and-a-half thousand at any one time.

[Gregg] How does it travel through an oven for 20 minutes?

[John] The oven's huge and it's got a traveling chain

or a deck that actually moves forward slowly all the time,

taking the tins with it.

[Gregg] The loaves are baked at about 230 degrees,

just like you would at home,

but that's about the only similarity.

The internal volume of this oven

is about a thousand times that of your home oven.

The loaves move through continuously,

they have to avoid holding up

the rest of the production line behind them.

It also means they avoid any hot spots,

which could given an uneven bake.

I can't believe the bread still doesn't get to sit still.

[John] It never sits still, we never stop.

[Gregg] From the moment the ingredients

were combined in the mixer,

the yeast has been feeding frantically

and creating those all important gas bubbles.

But now its time is up.

The actual heat of the oven

then kills the yeast and the yeast stops working.

[Gregg] And the heat of the metal around the outside

is actually forming the crust, it's scalding it.

Yeah it creates a sort of caramelized surface

and you get the crust.

[Gregg] After 20 minutes in the oven,

the lid comes off and my perfect loaf is revealed.

[machines whirring]

But before it can be sliced and bagged,

it has to take a ride

through one of the most bizarre rooms I've ever seen.

This place just gets weirder and weirder,

and I'm guessing by the temperature,

this is some kind of fridge.

Yeah, this is our cooler

and this is the one bit of the process we can't speed up.

[Gregg] Why do we need to cool it down?

[John] We need to get the bread below 30 degrees

so that we can slice it effectively

and put it in the bag without creating condensation

because if we had condensation,

we might encourage mold growth.

And are they going up in a spiral?

So we've got on this side, we've got the loaves going up,

they go across and the come down this spiral.

[Gregg] How many loaves of bread are in here, mate?

[John] Well over the two hours,

just over 16,000 at its maximum.

[Gregg] It's really difficult for me to imagine

Mrs. Jones from Kincave Road, Peckham

unwrapping that loaf of bread tomorrow.

I've been in the food business for a long, long time,

and this may be the most extraordinary sight

I've ever witnessed.

I'm starting to appreciate

just how much work goes every loaf they make here.

Right now the loaf I'm making's

got nothing to do but chill out for a couple of hours.

So I'm going exploring to see how they make

one of the nation's other bakery favorites.

Oh, we love our muffins in the UK.

We get through over 146 million of the things every year.

That maybe the best thing I've ever seen.

And almost half of those are made in this one factory.

Joanna Turner is in charge of making sure

they're all up to scratch.

That's lovely, everybody should have one of them

at the end of their gardens.

[Joanna] A life size one.

Why do they come down that slide like that?

What it does, it slows the process of 'em coming down.

If they came down on one big tube it would be too fast.

[Gregg] After they're baked,

the muffins come out of the cooler upstairs

and are dropped down to this packing line.

As they drop, these spirals

also divide the muffins into two rows

to give Joanna a better look at them as they go past.

They all look exactly the same to me.

How would you know the difference between-

No, right, let me have a look.

We've got that one, near perfect.

That one is small and dumpy, so it ain't really any good.

As someone who considers himself as small and dumpy,

I think that's a bit mean.

How many muffins are going through here?

[Joanna] Roughly 18,000 pieces an hour.

[Gregg] 18,000 an hour!

Yeah and roughly about 1.3 million a week.

We are eating a lot of eggs Benedict aren't we?

We are.

It's just bouncing them across the-

That's it, yeah. It's like a pinball machine.

[Gregg] Why is it doing that?

[Joanna] It's evenly dispersing them

so there's the same amount both sides.

If I was gonna be a bakery product,

- I'd wanna be a muffin. - [Joanna laughs]

It's like a day out at the Epsom Derby.

[Gregg laughs]

And they're under starters orders, and they're off.

- And then it comes on track. - That is just brilliant.

Do you know the Muffin man?

I do.

[jazzy music]

[Gregg] While Joanne's busy making muffins

to feed the nation,

I've come back to check on how my loaf's getting on.

It's spent two hours lazily circling the cooling tower,

and now it's on the way to meet Lee Smith,

the man whose job it is to bag 'em and tag 'em.

I've been watching these loaves of bread

since they were flour.

Yeah.

This is the final stage, right?

Okay, yeah.

Right, what'll happen next

is it'll travel through a slicing machine.

It'll be sliced into different slices,

whether you want medium or whether you want thick.

Medium you have 20 slices. On a thick you have 18.

- I like thick. - You like thick?

You're on the right side, this is thick.

You've got 18 slices on here.

[Gregg] Thick sliced is the most popular type of bread

everywhere in the UK except the North East of England

where for some reason they prefer their slices

a little thinner.

Next up the sliced loaf goes into an unbelievable invention.

Dah! [laughs].

A high speed bagging machine.

Literally the best thing since sliced bread.

As the scoops moving forward it's blowing air into the bag

so the scoop will raise up,

it'll open it up and it will actually drag the bag

onto the loaf of bread.

[Gregg] So, from what I understand about that,

the bread is falling, the loaf of bread slice is falling

from one conveyor to another.

Yeah it is, yeah.

And in that time an arm is blowing up a plastic bag

- and pulling it over it. - That's right yeah.

- Get out the way. - Here have a look.

Go and get a cup of tea, I'm gonna watch this for a while.

[upbeat music]

All right. Okay, now what?

Is this the end of the journey?

No, no, it's got a bit further to go yet.

It's gotta be metal detected for contamination.

- Metal detected? - Yeah.

[Gregg] How can metal get in there?

There's all types of machinery on the plant.

If you asked 100 people on the street

something that they would least expect to find in a bakery,

I reckon top answer would be metal detector [laughs].

Can I test it?

[Lee] Yeah, of course you can, carry on, yeah.

[Gregg] To make sure the metal detector is working properly,

they regularly feed through a fake loaf

with tiny pieces of metal in it.

[Laughs]

[soft rock music]

The final stage for everything made here at the bakery

is the 62,000 square foot dispatch hold.

Exactly three and a half hours

after the flour first left the silo,

my loaf is ready to hit the road.

And it's Dispatch Manager Matt Stevens' job

to get that done as quickly as possible.

I baked a loaf today.

I've been hard at it in the bakery.

When are the customers gonna be able

to actually get their hands on it?

It'll be tomorrow morning

no matter where in the country you are.

- Is that right? - That's right.

That's not bad, mate.

[Matt] Our busiest time of day for vehicle movement

is about three o'clock in the morning.

[Gregg] So it can get to the stores by 9?

- -Correct, yeah. - Is that right?

[Gregg] I know this cause I used to be a greengrocer

delivering to restaurants.

We would start at about one, two o'clock in the morning.

So we could get deliveries to their door at nine.

Exactly the same for you.

That's right, every store has to have their bread

as early as possible.

So does that mean this space might fill up

and then empty again?

[Matt] It does, yes.

So we started picking this morning,

and we'll be picking the customer orders

until about two o'clock tonight.

By about five o'clock in the morning,

all of those orders will have disappeared

and the floor will be virtually empty.

So while the rest of the nation sleeps,

this place is a massive hive of activity?

[Matt] Absolutely, it's at its busiest at the night time.

You guys are vampires.

Some of you must never see daylight.

The dispatch holding is responsible

for delivering every product made at the West Brom bakery,

but they also handle products

from Allied's nine other bakeries,

which means this place never, ever stops.

How many loaves like mine

are going through your dispatch every day?

On our busiest day it could be up to a million loaves.

That includes bread, muffins, rolls.

[Gregg] Which one causes you the most headaches?

[Matt] Probably rolls.

In the winter demand can be about three million a week,

but in the summer if the sun comes out

on a Thursday afternoon

you know that forecast can go up

to five million in two days time,

and especially as it gets towards the weekend,

you know full well that people are watching the forecast,

barbecues on the go and then we're gonna be in

for a torrid time for the next 48 hours.

So the rest of the nation loves its picnics,

loves its barbecues, apart from you, you hate them?

Exactly, we love the rain.

[Gregg laughs]

Supermarkets only place their orders the day before,

so the process of dispatching the million items a day

is an incredible feat.

It takes some heavylifting, some careful planning

and it turns out a fair amount of hard graft.

Well we've got about 30,000 baskets to pick by hand today

before two o'clock in the morning, are you ready?

Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.

So I understand and don't mess it up,

these brown baskets here, we have to fulfill 30,000 of them?

Correct, yes.

We have to lift them all by hand?

The vast majority will be picked individually yes.

[Gregg] Like most large bakeries,

the dispatch hall uses a bit of high tech kit

to help keep the humans in check.

[ computer voice, indistinct ]

The pick-by-voice system

is a simple voice-activated computer

which collates all the supermarkets' orders

and tells the packers exactly what needs to go where.

Well, when I say simple...

[Computer] Take 3-2 of 6.

"Take 3-2 of 6." What does that mean?

That means take 32 of 6 units, how's your maths?

Uh, not great.

Right, so, there I need 32 lots of sixes.

How many is 32 sixes?

192.

How do you know that?

I just worked it out.

192 and how many have I got in each tray?

24.

- Do you enjoy a muffin? - I love a muffin yeah.

Good to know.

Oh five, six, yeah, right, we've completed that one.

So drop that, at the bottom of the first stack,

- so we're starting a new stack. - Oh, my guns fell off.

Right, that's my first supermarket done, brilliant.

Good, that's the first one. There's thousands to do.

Let's get going.

[Computer] Next, go to [indistinct]

Right. Yeah, that's what I want.

-Scan product. - So I scan that.

[Computer] Take two of five.

Two of five, that's 10, that's 10, that's 10.

[Computer] Next take 37535.

Oh, my maths is terrible.

- 200. -Go to store 375.

Yes!

- Go to bay. -35.

Four of muffins.

Five of these to a thing, that's 10, that's easy.

[Computer] Next drop 206.

[Gregg] This dispatch hall is working 24 hours a day.

But it's not until the wee hours,

when we're tucked up in bed, that things really get manic.

Every night bakeries like this all over the UK

are frantically loading bread that's just hours old,

ready for us to buy the next morning.

Over 60 trucks will leave this one bakery tonight,

and the loaf I made could end up as far away as Ireland

or it might just end up

at the supermarket around the corner.

It's impossible to comprehend baking bread on this scale

until you've seen every single loaf of bread

come whizzing past you.

I stupidly believed it was gonna be a simple process,

it's not.

It's a highly complicated process

because it's such a fast process.

It has to be if they are gonna supply the whole nation

with thousands upon thousands of identical loaves of bread.