Original subtitles

Here in the UK, malt loaf has been a popular teatime treat

for over 80 years, and every year we get through 130 million of them.

But it's a bit of an enigma.

It's called malt loaf, so it should be bread, right?

But it's sweet and squidgy.

Surely that makes it a cake.

Whatever it is, there's nothing quite like it.

To find out how these sticky treats are made, I've come here

to the biggest malt loaf factory in the world!

I'm Gregg Wallace,

and today I'm...helping...

Sorry about that.

It's all right.

..the team who put the sticky...

Oh, that's lovely.

Can I have some of that for me ice cream?

..and the squidgy...

A sweet volcanic eruption.

..ingredients together in this space-age factory...

I feel like I've launched the Death Star. Yeah!

..that runs like clockwork.

Well, it did until I turned up!

Stop! Halt production.

I'm Cherry Healey, and I'm turning heavy metal...

Ooh! Ooh!

..into bakeware to be proud of.

A finished loaf tin.

And I'm finding out how to match cake with the perfect brew.

And historian Ruth Goodman dials up to download

the surprising story of a British baking company that cooked up

the world's first business computer.

There's this little bunch of people

who are busily devising the modern world.

In just 24 hours, this factory will

produce and pack 500,000 loaves.

And I'm going to reveal just how they do it.

Welcome to Inside The Factory.

This is the Soreen factory in Trafford, Manchester.

They've been making malt loaf on this site for 14 years

with a recipe that dates back to the 1930s.

Today, their loaves come in eight sizes and 11 different flavours,

including banana and strawberry.

Tonight, I'll be following production of one of

their bestsellers, the lunchbox mini loaf

in original malt loaf flavour.

But there's nothing mini about the start of the process.

At the towering 15-metre tall silo,

I'm meeting supply manager and guru of the intake bay,

John Lamb.

Morning. Hello, John.

Hello, mate. What have we got on that truck, please?

We have got a tanker full of wheat flour.

There's 18 tonne in there at the moment.

Where's this flour come from?

This comes from Liverpool, where they planned it at the depot.

Right. We use European wheat and Canada wheat.

And how much of that turns up every week?

25 tonne comes six days a week.

If you need the flour in the factory,

why don't you keep the flour inside the factory?

Because as you can see, the silo is taller than the factory.

Oh, yeah. And the flour could be explosive as well.

So we leave it outside in a silo, protected.

Because flour is really combustible, isn't it?

Yes. Safer out here than in there?

It is, yeah.

Should we get this truck emptied? Yes.

The inside of the tanker is pressurised...

Crikey, it's heavy.

..which will blast the flour along transfer hoses and up pipes

into the top of the silo.

That's it... Right...

LAUGHTER

You put the seal in,

I'll get the pipe in, and then you clamp it.

Luckily, Pete the driver has done this before.

Right, go on.

What would happen if I got this wrong?

You'd have 18 tonne of flour on the floor,

and you'd end up with a shovel!

When the pipes are in place, the valves are opened...

You can start it up now, mate.

..and the clock on my malt loaf production begins.

What we need to do now, mate, is you just raise it up, mate.

All the way? All the way. As high as it'll go.

As the tank is raised, a combination of gravity

and the increased pressure forces the flour out at the rate

of ten kilos a second.

I've lifted tonnes of flour with one finger. One finger, mate.

And Pete's got a simple way of checking

if his delivery is complete.

With all this high-tech kit, you use a hammer to see if it's empty.

Oh, yeah. Brilliant.

That's hollow. That's hollow, that, mate.

That's empty, right?

Thank you, Peter.

That was fun.

I'm making a batch of 6,000 loaves,

and the wheat flour is just the first item in my recipe.

Before I can start baking, I'm going to need the ingredient

that puts the malt in my malt loaf.

It's prepared 220 miles away in Stowmarket,

and Cherry has been to find out how it's done.

This is Muntons, one of the largest producers of malt in the UK,

and my guide to making it is maltings manager George Irving.

Hi, George. Oh, hi, Cherry.

What a mega lorry!

What is malt?

Malt is a product which we'll produce from this barley.

So malt is really barley.

Like, barley is the parent of malt.

It is. It's the starting base.

I think the easy way to explain malt is to show you.

Barley is also used in the production of alcoholic drinks

like beer and whisky.

For Gregg's malt loaf,

the barley is soaked in water for 36 hours

before it arrives in one of four steamy boxes.

George, it is so humid in here, it's like being in Florida.

What is going on?

Why is there a fountain of barley?

Well, that barley is now called green malt.

We're now loading it into the box, so it will be in here for four days.

OK.

The wet barley, or green malt,

grows quickly in the 35-degree tropical conditions.

The humidity rises to 95%,

and like any seed in the warm and wet, the grain begins to sprout

in a process called germination.

Let me show you what it looks like. Can I have a look?

Oh, it's got little tails now!

These are called rootlets, and that's an indication that

that malt has grown really nicely.

When the barley germinates, it produces enzymes that begin

to convert starch, the energy stored inside the grain, into sugars.

A simple test, known as the maltster's rub,

shows when this process has taken place.

What you do between your finger and your thumb... Yeah.

..is take off the end. OK.

Squeeze out that white bit between your finger and your thumb,

and hey, presto! Oh, wow!

So this whole process is to get this white substance. What is it?

What you're showing is the area where we've produced

all the lovely enzymes.

Those enzymes will break down the starch, and that starch

will then produce lovely sugars for use in the malt loaf.

So that starchy substance that I'm holding in my hand,

that will produce a flour that will give the malt loaf energy

and stickiness and sweetness? Correct.

I'm so proud to be standing in front of this malt, the way it's rubbing.

That makes you a happy maltster? It does.

So George's green malt is ready to be sent for drying in the kiln.

George, what is going on in there?

It looks like a steam room.

It's very hot in there. It's just like a sauna.

What's happening is the moisture has been driven off from the malt

so we can make sure it's safe and dry, in readiness

for use for the malt loaf.

Hang on a minute. So the farmers dry it, you get it wet again

and now you're drying it again?

Correct. This is part of the malting process.

Water in, water out, water in and water out.

The green malt is dried for 24 hours, at 75 degrees Celsius,

before the rootlets are cleaned off along a giant conveyor system.

And after eight days of processing,

it's finally malted barley.

Here we go. My freshly dried malt.

That's the sample. Can I taste it?

Of course you can.

Really crunchy.

Can you taste the sweetness?

Mm. Really sweet.

Really malty.

That is so delicious, just as it is.

To turn it into malt flour,

it's milled on site, where the white sugary starch is separated

from the hard shell in an enclosed roller mill

before it's bagged up, loaded onto a lorry

and sent on to Gregg at the factory.

Back in Manchester at the malt loaf factory, my wheat flour

has been pumped into the silo

and now the malt flour is arriving.

These 800kg bags are off-loaded

straight into the appropriately named "big bag room",

where I'm meeting operations manager Tony Grogan.

Tony?

Hiya, Gregg.

So how often does this come in?

Comes in every ten days, Gregg.

Can we open the bag up, have a look in?

Unfortunately not. We keep this sealed for freshness.

I have got a sample here.

Oh! Oh, OK, cool.

That's much thicker and denser than wheat flour. Let me have a...

Oh, I like that smell.

It's almost like vanilla, it smells a little bit like a banana.

How much malt flour to wheat flour?

When this mixes, we would put in around 10kg of malt flour

into a mix.

And how much flour in there? 100kg.

So only 10% of your mix is the malt.

Yes. It's only a small amount because it's such a strong

malty flavour. Any more and it would be too strong, would it?

Exactly, yeah. So wheat flour, just a bag of wheat that we would

get off the shelf, just to make a loaf of bread with?

It's not quite the same.

It's specially designed for us.

It's an all-purpose flour that gives a certain strength of protein

that we require. Because your loaf has got

to be bound tighter, denser than a loaf of...? That's right. Ah!

The protein in wheat flour is also known as gluten,

and it's what gives structure to bread, cakes and my malt loaf,

while the malt flour will give it its flavour.

So we've got wheat flour, we've got the malt flour, anything else?

We also have starch,

but I suppose most people would know that as cornflour.

That's a cheat's way of thickening a sauce.

Yeah, like thickening your gravy at home.

Why do you use that? The cornflour gives you that bit of squidginess

what you're looking for once you've baked a loaf. Let me get this right.

So the malt flour obviously gives it its flavour.

The wheat flour, that balances the proteins.

And then the starch, that gives it, like, the gooey texture.

Is that right? That's it.

So my malt loaf is packed full of flour power!

And while the wheat flour stands by in the silo,

the malt and corn flours are hoisted up...

Would you like to go and see? Yeah, yeah, please.

..ready to be loaded into hoppers for weighing.

What have we got here, then?

So, you put your big bag up now,

and now we're going to open it up underneath.

So at the moment, it's still tied off, so we need to undo the tie

for the malt flour to drop inside.

Can I do that? You certainly can.

So as soon as I untie this cable... Be quick.

..almost a tonne of flour is going to come out. Yeah.

Wahey!

You need to close that door quite quick now, Gregg.

Oh!

Comes out a bit rapid, doesn't it? Did say. Made you nervous, then.

I dropped a bit.

Don't worry, we'll clean it up.

Sorry about that. It's all right.

There's nearly a tonne of flour in one of those bags.

They're not going to miss a little bit.

The flours from my mix come from all over the world.

But Ruth has been exploring a time when all our grain was grown

and milled right here in the UK.

In the early 19th century, as many as 10,000 windmills

turned wheat into flour.

Today, there are only around 50 working windmills left,

and I want to know why.

Fosters Mill, in Cambridgeshire, dates back to the 1850s,

and I'm hoping miller Jonathan Cook can show me what it took...

Hello.

..to keep the sails turning.

So what would life have been like for millers

in the sort of heyday of windmills?

Well, it was a brisk time of trade, so the farmers would store grain

on the farm and then bring it in sack carts up to the mill.

They'd wait their turn, a phrase that we have

from our milling history, which is in common use.

Waiting their turn of the sails?

Waiting their turn to bring their grain,

waiting their turn for the wind to blow, to get their grain ground.

Whoa! Look at this!

Traditionally, to grind flour, millers used

what we would now call a soft grain.

So this is a local wheat, just as it would have been in the 19th century,

brought from a local farm.

So we're going to be able to take some of this now up the mill

and grind it, ready to produce some flour.

In fact, do you want to give me a hand?

Yeah. I haven't got to carry a sack up the stairs, have I?

You don't have to carry a sack.

We're going to let the wind do the work, OK?

Bit slow today because the wind's not so strong.

The windmill's sails turn a series of cogs in the roof.

These wind a chain that lifts the sack to the first floor

and also powers a rotating shaft

that runs the whole way down the centre of the mill.

Wooden gears connect to the shaft and drive the grindstone,

which is ready for my soft wheat grain.

Great. So that's our grain in the hopper.

And so here are our millstones, our grinding stones.

So two pieces of stone. The bottom stone is stationary. Right.

The top stone is turning,

and as it turns, it's gradually getting to fine flour.

The whole grain of wheat, including the outer shell, is ground up

and pours down to the bottom floor.

Look at that. Look at that.

This wholemeal flour needs a further process to remove the shell

to create white flour, so it's poured

into a Victorian flour dresser.

It's now being fed down this rotating drum,

which is a big sieve, and we can see the white particles,

which is the white flour,

the finest particles coming through the sieve,

and the bran that remains is then being taken out.

The inferior bran was sold off cheaply, while the white flour

made loaves for wealthier customers.

Demand quickly grew for these more refined loaves,

so wheat grain was shipped in bulk from around the world.

But this created a big problem for the windmills.

The imported grains were much harder, and tough for traditional

British millstones to grind.

To tackle the harder grain, mills like this,

Holme Mill in Bedfordshire,

used water turbines to power new metal rollers,

which were installed here in 1894

by Lindsey Frost's great-grandfather.

Hello! Hello, Ruth.

Come this way. Follow me.

This is a fantastic-looking machine.

So what exactly does it do?

The wheat is taken into the brake

rollers, and the two rollers work

at different speeds and they tear apart the starch

from the wheat grain itself.

And that's done by the grooves that you can see here.

This mill's fully automated system could run nonstop,

powered by the constantly flowing river,

unlike the windmill waiting on the wind to turn its sails.

In just 30 minutes, it could produce as much flour as a windmill

could on a whole windy day.

Ultimately, the new metal roller mills were able to produce

tonnes more of this, white flour,

and they did so more efficiently

than the stone grinding and sieving

methods of the old windmills.

By 1910, three quarters of the windmills which had served

Britain so faithfully were abandoned,

and for the next 100 years, our insatiable demand for white flour

dominated the industry.

There has, however, been a revival of more artisan breads.

But if you'd like to try some stone-ground, well, there are so few

windmills left that you might just have to wait your turn.

Back in Manchester, the flours for my malt loaves have been pumped,

hoisted and dumped on my shoes!

And now, 40 minutes after my big bag delivery,

Tony and I are heading to the tank room.

So what is that? So that's malt extract.

I've heard of that, I don't actually know what it is.

This will intensify your flavour.

Oh, I gotcha. It gives you more maltiness.

Can I have a look at it? Absolutely.

We've got some samples for you here.

Malt extract is a sweet, sticky syrup.

It's made by mixing malt flour with hot water

and heating till it thickens...

Mmm!

..concentrating the flavour.

I like this. It's obviously sweet, but it's not sweet like honey.

Yeah, it's a natural sweetener, but it means that we can use

less refined sugar into our mix, then.

Is that right? Yeah.

Anything else in it I should know about?

It's rich in vitamin B. Is it?

Yeah. So it's good for you.

Oh, right, OK.

So how much of this would go into your mix?

9kg. So it's around 4% of your mix.

Vitamin B boosts energy levels and brain function,

and malt also contains amino acids,

which help build muscle, amongst other things.

And this tastes better than a vitamin pill.

So if this is natural, and it is sweet and lovely,

does this mean we don't have to use any sugar?

Not quite. We do have a black inverted sugar what we use.

What's black inverted sugar?

That's a concentrated, refined sugar.

Can I try that? Absolutely.

Well, I'm definitely indulging my

sweet tooth today, my friend, aren't I?

This one's a lot more powerful.

Look at that. As in taste.

When you heat sugar and water,

the big sugar molecules break down into smaller ones.

Mm!

This is called inverting the sugar.

This is probably as close to treacle what you would taste at home.

As more sugar is dissolved in the liquid,

it makes a much sweeter syrup,

and the longer it's heated, the darker it gets.

Oh, that's really sweet, and it's almost got, like, a burnt finish.

Alongside the malt extract,

this will add that all-important sticky texture to my loaves.

Oh, that's lovely!

Can I have some of that for me ice cream?

Mm! Anything else in here I should know about?

Yeah, the only thing left now is vegetable oil

what's pumped straight over. Pumped over to where?

Straight to your mixing station.

How do I get there? Follow this pipework through the wall,

where Vicky will meet you.

See you! See you later.

70 metres of pipe run between the tank room and the mixing station.

And apparently, I can't get lost if I just follow it.

Food developer Vicky Pomfret is waiting to help me

make my malt loaf mix.

Are you Vicky?

I am Vicky. Vicky, I'm Gregg.

I have been really busy getting all your ingredients together.

Is this the mixing station? It is the mixing station.

What is that?

So this is our mixing plan.

All our ingredients

are all waiting to come down into the mixing bowl.

You can tell on there where everything is?

Yes. So you've got everything ready, the wheat flour in the silo,

the malt flour, and you've got the starch ready in the big bag room,

and in the tank room you've got the invert syrup

and the malt extract ready.

Fabulous, so what do we start with?

So we start with a mixing bowl.

What goes in first?

We add the liquids first.

Can I press something?

Initiate, make a batch. Initiate batch maker.

Oh, it's very space-age, innit?

It is a little bit!

Eh? I feel like I've launched the Death Star! Yeah!

I suppose that would make me Darth Baker!

Like a gang of superheroes, my ingredients are assembling.

My wheat flour is sucked from the silo with a force equivalent

to 250 vacuum cleaners through a giant sieve,

and 100kg is weighed out into the alien-like hopper.

Next come the malt flour and starch.

And while the flours stand by, the liquids, the malt extract

and invert sugar, plus oil and water,

are pumping into the mixing bowl.

So you'll see all the liquids will start to go in.

Have you programmed it to give just the right amount? Yes.

All pre-weighed and batched up, further up, and it'll just drop

the right amount. Because I've already had a bit of an accident

with the flour. I'm not likely to find myself ankle-deep in liquid?

No, I think you're going to be fine.

Once the liquids are safely in, the flours cascade into the bowl.

How do we know when that's done?

So that's it. It's all done.

That comes out a lot faster than the liquids, as I found to my cost!

Yeah, you did find out.

Is that ready to come out? Yep.

Look at that.

That is the biggest cake mix I have ever seen!

If you're really, really good, do you get to lick the bowl?

But that's not all.

A couple of final ingredients are added by hand.

First, yeast.

Hang on.

I thought we were making a cake.

Now you're turning it into a loaf of bread.

What is it? Cake or bread?

So it's kind of a sweet leavened bread, but it's also a cake.

It's a bit of a hybrid.

You want your cake and eat it, Vicky. That's what you want. I do.

Anything else? Salt.

Bit of salt, just for the flavour?

So the salt adds to the flavour,

and it also keeps the yeast under control.

Does it? Basically, salt stops the yeast from going too far?

Yes. All right. Are you going to tip them in?

We've got everything in the bowl without a spillage,

but now I've got to line it up precisely under the mixer.

How do I know if I've got it right?

Well, we'll know if we haven't. Whoa!

I want to press the button. Hit the green one.

This one? Yeah. Descend.

Go for it.

Yay!

We got cake mix!

Well, we nearly got cake mix. We've almost got bread mix.

Kind of bread-cake mix. Bread-cake mix.

That's nice, innit, looking in the bowl?

It is nice. Everybody likes to look in mixing bowls, don't they?

I think it's therapeutic.

After five minutes of mixing, we need one more vital ingredient.

Raisins.

Where do you get the raisins?

Well, to get the raisins, you're going to have to speak to Danny.

A short walk from the mixing station is the raisin prep area

where head of engineering Danny Hobbs is waiting for me.

I've been told to come and get some raisins.

You've come to the right place.

Mate, these are really small!

Yeah, these are our midget raisins.

Can I taste these? Yeah, of course. Go ahead. Where are they from?

We import these from Turkey.

They're really nice, but they are really sweet.

They are, yes. What are you doing with them?

This is the rehydration area.

I mean, they're lovely little sweet raisins.

Why hydrate them?

So ever since we've done malt loaf, they've always been rehydrated

to pump them up and give us that extra texture for the loaf.

Well, what's this, then? This is the vac tumbler.

The vac tumbler is like a pressurised washing machine...

Oh!

..and we're filling it with 440kg of raisins!

It seems like a mountain of raisins to me.

How many boxes are you going through?

Yeah, on average we go through about 2,000 boxes a week.

OK, Gregg, so that's us now full.

Are we ready? Yep.

Let her roll.

baby, right round

My raisins tumble for 20 minutes

with 44kg of water.

When the pressure inside the machine is reduced,

the raisins draw in the water and expand.

Can I touch them?

Yeah, go ahead.

They're now massive!

I know they're a little bit wet, but what are they,

twice the size, three times the size?

Yeah, more or less.

But they're quite sticky. So we've got 13.5 in there now, Gregg.

Right. We need two of these,

so we need to make another one up for our mix. Righto.

Right, there you go. Off to Vicky. You've got loads more to do, right?

Thank you. Sticky old job.

The raisins are now rehydrated

to add more chewy texture to my loaves,

so I'm wheeling them back to Vicky at the mixer.

Vicky.

Oh, you've been busy.

Do we tip these in? Yep, we just tip these in.

It's 27kg I got you, right?

Yeah, in total. Is that our last ingredient?

That's our last ingredient.

Whoop-whoop! We're nearly there. We're nearly at malted loaf.

One last and thorough mix incorporates my raisins.

It's not just a hook that's turning, the bowl's also...

The bowl turns as well, yeah.

So the hook's going one way, the bowl's going another.

Yeah, so you're getting a really good counter mix.

Because it's got yeast in it, does it need to rest and rise

like a bread? Not really.

Not for the lunchbox loaves.

They get as much rise as they need when they're on the production line.

But it does rise a little bit? Yeah.

So can that go straight in the oven?

Well, it's almost ready but you need to go and sort out some tins.

All right. Keep your eye on it. I shall.

The next stage of my malt loaf journey takes me

from the mixing station into the all-important bakery.

At 3,000 square metres,

this is the heart of the factory.

And to find out all about baking tins, I'm off to see Tony again.

Tony. All right, Gregg?

If he's the Tin Man, does that make me Dorothy?

These are the baking trays, right? Yeah, yeah.

You know, they remind me of the London Underground.

Yeah, they do a bit, yeah.

A constant shunting of trains. I like this.

Yeah, there's lots of them.

That is quite a cute and unusual little shape.

Well, this is specifically designed, this tin, for our lunchbox loaves.

As we can see here, we have 32 pockets altogether in a tin.

What's that made out of? I thought that would be silicon.

No? No, it's made of steel, that.

There are 750 tins on the belt.

At the start, they pass under a vacuum

to suck up any leftover crumbs.

Then they're sprayed with an oil and water mix

to help the loaves turn out after baking.

It takes 55 minutes for them to complete a full circuit

of the factory, from filling to baking and back again.

Hot. Why are they hot?

They're still hot from the oven, and you start the process again.

They never cool down?

Only at the end of the week when you take them off.

So the oven's so hot, they're constantly going around hot?

Yep, six days a week.

How many little individual loaves are we talking about

baking at any one time?

So when you're full circuit,

there'll be 24,000 lunchbox loaves going round at any one time.

That's incredible.

TRAIN WHISTLE All aboard!

Now, you may not have one of these trays at home,

with 32 perfect pockets, but most of us have got a baking tin or two

in the cupboard, and Cherry's been finding out how they're made...

..the traditional way.

Paranoid by Black Sabbath

The city of Birmingham is famous for metal,

and I don't mean jewellery making.

No, I'm not talking about Black Sabbath,

the rock band that formed here, either.

I'm on the trail of some even bigger heavy metal giants.

Wow!

That machine is spectacular.

How old is it? It's about 100 years old.

It looks like it should be in a museum. Probably, yes.

Ian Williams and the team at Silverwood Bakeware

are guardians of these extraordinary mechanical giants

that have been turning out baking tins for over a century.

And I want to see how it's done,

by making my own loaf tin, starting with the raw materials.

So we need some tin.

We don't actually use any tin, we actually use aluminium.

Has anyone used a tin for a cake tin?

Yes, in the olden days they did. They used tin.

Why did people decide aluminium was much better than tin?

It's probably because it's recyclable and it's easier to use.

The tins begin life as aluminium sheeting.

I'm ready for some chopping. Ready for some chopping.

Chops away!

It's cut to size with this lethal-looking bit of kit.

This is like one of those guillotines that you have at school.

To make my loaf tin,

I need to cut a rectangle exactly 25 by 30 centimetres.

Beautiful. That's it.

My flat piece of aluminium is now ready for shaping

by these metal monsters.

OK, so these are giant presses. Yes.

And they're pressing the shape of a loaf tin.

That's it, yes.

In charge of taming these 15-tonne beasts are Jenny and Sue.

How do we turn these heavy slabs of metal into beautiful tins?

So what we have to do is oil...

Yeah. ..both sides.

Yeah. Why do you oil it?

Because otherwise it'll split.

And splitting the metal isn't the only danger here.

This gigantic press crashes down with a force equivalent

to 100 tonnes, the same weight as a blue whale!

So if, Jenny, you'd like to show her, it goes in that one now.

And there are safety guards everywhere

to stop our fingers getting in the way.

And then you put it in there like... Right.

Then you step back. Yeah. Yeah, you step back! Yeah!

And...

Ooh! Woo!

The tin is formed in two stages to prevent the aluminium from cracking.

First, the basic loaf shape is formed in a shallow mould.

Under pressure, the molecular structure of the aluminium actually

changes, making it briefly pliable,

but it hardens within 15 seconds,

so it's a race to get it to the second press.

Whoa, look at this! This is amazing! There you go.

This press punches the metal into a deeper mould...

Oh, my gosh, look at that!

..to create the final tin size,

a loaf-tastic 7.5cm deep.

That took, what, less than a minute? Yeah.

How many do you make in a day?

We could do, say, 800, 900, maybe more.

Holy moley! So you can make nearly 1,000 cake tins? We can do, yeah.

My tin's taken shape, but now it needs trimming

under the watchful eye of Anne.

I think I've got the knack of this.

Ta-da! A loaf tin!

That's it. You've got the job! Yes!

And then it's swiftly on to Arthur, who sorts out the sharp edges.

Arthur, what is this process called?

Deburring and sateening.

Puts a nice finish on the outside

of the surface there, so nobody gets cut.

So deburring is to take the rough edge off something.

That's right, yeah. Can you do that with people?

Oh, no, no, no.

So what happens with this now?

It goes through the anodizers to be anodized.

All right, I'm going to go and get this anodized. OK.

Anodizing is a chemical process that turns the surface of my tin

into some pretty tough metal.

The tins are dipped into a sulphuric acid solution,

and when an electric current passes through, the surface

of the metal changes from aluminium to aluminium oxide,

which doesn't rust and is more resistant to scratching.

Ian, behold! A finished loaf tin!

Isn't it beautiful? It is.

Is it completely non-stick now?

Not quite.

OK. The more you use it, the more non-stick it becomes.

How does that work?

Collected oils over every time it gets used,

a little bit more, a little bit more and a little bit more,

and it makes it more non-stick the more you use it.

But if the oil collects,

isn't that unhygienic?

No, because you wash it. So if you put it in the dishwasher,

it'll be lovely and clean. No, don't put it in the dishwasher. No, no.

Just destroys the surface of the anodizing.

What's the best way to wash it? Soap and water.

No scrubbing. All right. Well, thank you very much, Ian.

My pleasure. Love my tin.

They press up to 1,000 baking tins a day here, but I'm happy

to be leaving with the one I made because it rocks.

Back up the road in Trafford, I'm one hour, 25 minutes

into the production of my malt loaves.

My ingredients have been weighed, plumped and mixed.

And now I've got a huge mixing bowl of malt loaf dough,

while 750 baking trays are ready and waiting.

And trust me, at over 250kg, this is a heavy job.

You've got to get it straight on to them prongs there.

Oh-ho! Back of the net! First time.

Gregg Wallace, near post.

Brilliant. Mix is in, let's go.

Let's shut these doors.

That's a fair old lump of kit, that is, because that's a heavy mix.

Very heavy, that.

Wouldn't want that to fall on your toe.

How does it work?

So this is the worm screw, we call it.

So it has two motors at the top,

it's a screw feed that screws the bowl all the way up to the top,

it tips it over and then all your dough will drop in.

I want to see it avalanche out. That'll be any moment now.

Whoa, here we go!

So all that looks like a sweet, sticky volcanic eruption.

It does a bit, yeah.

That is the edible equivalent of Vesuvius.

How do you get the residue bits out of the bowl?

Your bolt rotates round, a scraper arm would scrape all your excess

dough off and drop it inside.

That is the robot equivalent of licking the bowl.

The malt loaf mix drops into the hopper, and it's then pumped

through a pipe into a machine called a depositor.

Inside, the mix passes first between two feed rollers

and then is squeezed between two interlocking pumps.

These form the dough into 16 perfect portions that drop through funnels

into the tray pockets below.

Then the batch moves forward

and the second row of malt loaves is completed.

It takes just five seconds to fill the 32 pockets.

Remarkable, that is rapid.

Absolutely rapid.

What happens to them now?

So if you follow this down the line, this will go straight

into your baking process, through your oven.

You're a good teacher. No problem.

From the depositor, my army of freshly filled trays

march 30 metres to the oven where I'm rejoining Vicky.

That is a sizeable bit of kit, that. It is, it's 20 metres long.

How long are my little loaves going to be in that oven? 36 minutes.

It's a three-stage baking process.

The oven has three consecutive temperature zones,

and it's these different baking temperatures that are the key

to giving my malt loaves their unique, squidgy texture.

So what's stage one? Stage one is where we make the dough

a little bit more sticky and we activate the yeast

to make carbon dioxide bubbles.

The first bake is 12 minutes at a medium heat.

The yeast converts sugar in the dough

into pockets of carbon dioxide,

which will give them a chewy centre, and the loaves begin to rise.

So what's stage two?

So I'll show you, it's going to get even hotter. Oh!

You can feel the heat, even in the corridor here.

I'm just going to open the oven door for a bit more heat. Careful.

For stage two, the heat is whacked up to high for the next 12 minutes.

Really difficult to describe, that is like a wall of heat.

It is. Remarkable.

What powers all that heat?

So you've got 325 kilowatts of power off three burners,

and it's similar to 325 domestic ovens.

In this ultra-hot stage, the loaves begin

to develop their crust and colour.

It's becoming to darken and all the sugars are beginning to caramelise.

Surely you don't need all that heat to bake a little loaf like that.

Well, you do, because you need to make a really hard, crusty outer

and a really soft, sticky centre.

The temperature's lowered for the final 12 minutes.

This gentle bake keeps the centre of the loaf soft and sticky

and begins to dry out the crust.

Every minute,

448 loaves exit the oven,

and here comes my batch.

Oh, look. Look at them.

They look lovely!

They're my little bars of sweet stickiness, they are.

They are. I really love the dark colour on them.

Smells interesting. I thought it'd be biscuity, but it's slightly sweet

and very malty. Quite malty. Almost like a sweet pint of beer.

Vicky, let me try one.

No, you can't taste them, but I'll show you the reason why.

Vicky, that's not cooked! It is cooked, it's perfectly cooked.

The inside is liquid, like raw cake mix.

Well, that's the secret of our malt loaf,

and it takes three days to mature.

What does that mean, "mature"?

We need moisture migration to take place, so moisture moves

from the molten centre to the crusty outer, and it all softens.

Essentially, their crusty outside becomes nice and soft

and the centre becomes squidgy.

And that takes three days? It takes three days.

Where does it go from here, then?

That's going to the packing area.

How do I get there, Vicky? You need to just follow the line round.

I've followed quite a few lines.

Thank you. Thank you so, so much.

As well as the three-stage oven,

this bakery is full of clever machinery working to deliver

malt loaf precision.

Lots of factories have high-tech kit these days,

but Ruth has been investigating the incredible link

between the first business computer

and a British cake company.

In the first half of the 20th century, Jay Lyons and Co

was one of Britain's best-loved food brands...

..famous for its tea shops, the grander Trocadero

and the more everyday corner houses selling bread, cakes and sandwiches.

Named after one of its founders,

the company had begun in 1894 with a single tea shop.

Its success grew so rapidly, with hundreds of cafes

and restaurants, that it built its own factory to supply them.

By 1939, it was producing 60,000 tonnes of baked goods a year,

including more than 1,000 miles of Swiss roll.

This catering company didn't just revolutionise

the production of cake.

They took a chance on a technology that was going to change the world.

To decipher this surprising twist in the story,

I've come to the National Museum of Computing,

where they've reconstructed the first practical electronic computer.

Its development in Cambridge, in 1947, was funded by Lyons and Co,

and in 1951, Leo, the Lyons Electronic Office, was unveiled,

taking up a whole floor of its factory in West London.

Leo, the first automatic office in the world.

Leo is fast and flexible.

In 1961, Peter Byford was excited to join the company.

How did you get involved in this project?

I got involved because I left school, trying to find a job,

and I had an interview with Leo Computers Ltd.

So I became a trainee programmer.

Nobody knew what a computer is.

The lone programmer!

I find this quite intriguing as an idea, really,

of this small group of people working on a very new technology

in an area that you wouldn't think would be the centre of innovation,

a cake company!

No, no, that's right. Absolutely, a cake company.

And yet there's this little bunch of people who are busily devising

the modern world. Yes.

An electronic computer for office work must be absolutely reliable,

because delays are intolerable in an office working to a deadline.

So what were Lyons using this computer for?

Well, there is a list of things here,

and we've got bakery valuations,

which was the first one they ran in November 1951.

Ice cream statistics.

Tea blending, invoicing and statistics.

The world's first computerised payroll was on Leo 1.

Payslips that used to take six minutes to calculate

now took just one and a half seconds,

and the taking of orders for hundreds of tea shops

was also handled by Leo.

Each manageress has a standing order. After lunch each day,

she considers her stock and decides what variations

she will make to her order.

She speaks by telephone to head office, where her variations

are taken down directly on to cards.

PHONE RINGS

OK, so I get a phone call. You get a phone call,

and the tea shop manager then says, "These are my changes."

You put a card in the punch. A card, slot the card in, yeah.

She will tell you the code number for tea

and then the quantity change.

Yeah. That card then gets pushed into a card reader in Leo 1,

and it will then change the order.

And that pattern of holes can be read by the machine? That's right.

Immediately, packing notes begin to print out

ten shops at a time. By30, Leo has printed for 150 tea shops

and 40,000 items, exactly what is wanted at each tea shop.

So the machine is offering speed, more reliability?

Yes, it was accurate.

It was reliable in the sense that it will always get it right.

It was such a success that Lyons set up Leo Computers Ltd to make

and sell them to other companies.

Ford, BT, the Post Office and the Government all bought a Leo.

Remarkably, Leo computers remained operational until 1981,

the same year that Lyons tea shops closed their doors

for the last time.

These huge first computers would inspire everything that followed.

Who'd have thought that we would have tea and cake to thank

for all these technological changes

that have altered our lives forever?

Back at the factory, I'm one hour and 55 minutes into production,

and my malt loaves have been measured, mixed and baked.

They're busy maturing to the perfect texture as they head

to the packing hall.

Tony's meeting me at one of the factory's most fantastic

computer-controlled gadgets.

Your tins have travelled a 100-metre circuit.

I've followed them. And they will now be de-panned

with a robotic arm.

You call them taking them out of them as de-panning them? De-panning.

Using gentle suction that's just one tenth as strong

as a vacuum cleaner,

the baked loaves are lifted out of their pans and popped onto

the conveyor belt at a rate of 17 tins a minute.

That's them wrapping. Do you want to follow me? Yeah. Come on, then.

Hang on. Hang on, Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony. I'm really confused.

I thought those little malt loaves were supposed to mature

for three days, and they're going straight in the wrapper.

These go in the wrapper warm,

these mature in transit on the way to distribution.

Hang on, hang on. They mature inside the wrapper?

That's right. That can't be right!

On the way to the shops, they're maturing. That's correct.

But they must still be warm!

They are warm, but they're still hard on the outside.

Can I take one off the...? Yeah, please.

That is squidgy in the... It's squidgy in the middle,

hard on the outside,

but the moisture eventually, over three days, travels to the outside,

and when you cut into it, you have your lovely squidgy loaf.

Your little loaf comes to perfection inside the bag on a lorry?

That's correct. I'm impressed, but I'm also really impressed

at the speed of this.

Yeah, the speed of this line, Gregg, it's going at 270 a minute,

but we have two lines wrapping this,

so in total, 540 a minute.

This is a very fast and very remarkable little loaf in a bag.

It is.

Once they're individually wrapped,

the loaves are separated by another robot arm into batches of five.

Oh, right. More suckers.

Are they a little bit firmer this time? A little bit firmer,

but this is the reverse process now, so these have been packaged,

and these are going to go on your cardboard skillets.

What's a skillet?

It's just a piece of cardboard underneath that keeps

your bread together. Right, in the wrapper, still warm,

on the cardboard skillet? That's right.

And then they get wrapped again?

Yeah, they do. Yeah. Tony, forgive me.

That looks like a lot of plastic to me.

It is a lot of plastic, to be fair.

But what we're doing at the moment, we've changed the cardboard skillet

from plastic, and we're in the process of trialling

biodegradable film for a couple of products at the moment,

and hopefully we can move it across all our product ranges.

But you're aware that there is an issue and you're trying to do

something about it. We are, yeah. Well, fair enough.

How long will it take to wrap my 6,000 loaves?

It'll take around 13 minutes.

That will give us enough time for a cuppa.

Do you know anything sweet I can have with it?

I certainly do.

But I don't want one of those ones

that looks raw in the middle, thank you!

When you tuck into a slice of malt loaf with a nice brew,

do you ever stop to wonder whether you picked the right tea

to go with the malty flavour?

Well, Cherry has, and she's gone in search of the perfect cake

and cuppa combo.

Hello. Hello, good afternoon, madam.

What would you recommend to have with the mille?

With the mille, I will recommend our Marco Polo Blue.

Thank you very much.

SHE GASPS Wow!

Welcome to the wonderful world of tea and cake pairing.

Yes, it's a thing.

At this cafe in London's Covent Garden, they have a collection

of 1,000 teas, which they carefully match with food.

The grandest vintages are priced like fine wines.

How is everything, madam?

Absolutely superb.

You take pairing tea as seriously as someone might pair wine.

Even more, I would say.

But can the rules of gourmet tea and cake pairing be applied

to our malt loaf and traditional British brews?

To find out, I'm meeting Jane Milton,

Britain's very first tea sommelier.

Hello, Jane. Hi.

Are we having a tea party? We certainly are.

So you are a tea sommelier,

in the same way that you have a wine sommelier?

Absolutely the same.

If you think just about what you're eating and drinking together,

you should always try and pair them

so that they will enhance the flavours of things.

And I think rather than always going for the one tea,

the English breakfast blend, which is what we tend to do,

and have milk in it, it should be, what would suit that citrusy cake?

What would suit that chocolaty cake?

So let's start tea pairing.

I want to test which brew complements our humble malt loaf.

But first, I need to perfect my tasting technique.

People used to think that parts of your tongue tasted salt and sweet,

but actually it's a whole mouth experience.

When tea tasters drink tea,

they slurp it, so that you're distributing it

across all your taste buds.

SHE SLURPS

Like that? Bigger slurp, like a real...

So you're sucking it right to the back your mouth, yeah.

It does make your tea taste different. It really does.

So, with my slurping sorted,

Jane has chosen three everyday teas for me to judge

which goes best with a buttered slice.

So the first tea is an Earl Grey.

So it's the black base on it, which is fully fermented,

so it's robust enough to stand up to the cake.

There's quite a bit of a bite, which is quite nice,

to cleanse the palate for chewiness.

Yes.

Earl Grey is flavoured with oil of bergamot, a citrus fruit

which cuts through the richness of the loaf.

The hot tea also melts the buttery malt loaf,

amplifying the flavour combination.

Mm!

Next, Jane has chosen a Sri Lankan green tea.

So this is our fresh-tasting,

rounded, slightly sweet one,

so that there's not a huge contrast.

Malt loaf and green tea,

not a combo I would have naturally thought of.

QUITE like it.

I wonder if I'll prefer the third choice, an Indian Assam tea.

Just a nice, rounded, flavoured black tea again,

but with enough punchiness to stand up,

and a bit of maltiness in the tea as well.

This one I found quite bitter.

It's a little bit more drying, astringent on your mouth,

but it balances out

some of the overt sweetness.

So if something feels like it's sucked all the moisture

from my mouth, but it's not really, really unpleasant,

it's probably astringent. It's astringent rather than bitter.

That dry mouthfeel is produced when the astringent tannins

in the black tea bind with the protein in our saliva.

And for me, it's not much of a match for malt loaf.

So now you've tasted those three,

which one do you think your favourite is?

Without doubt, number one.

Earl Grey is definitely my winner.

This is very chewy and rich and buttery, and that just came in,

just cleansed the palate.

And still left you with the malt loaf flavour afterwards, too.

But the oranginess and the maltiness together...

Oh, what a combo!

That is a match made in heaven. Good.

So the right tea really can help release the complicated flavours

within your malt loaf.

Everyone knows that tea and cake is a winning combination,

but if you take a bit of time and experiment, you could find a tea

that could take your cake to a whole new level.

Back in Manchester, after just two hours and six minutes,

my batch of 6,000 loaves have been baked and individually wrapped.

They've then been grouped five to a pack,

which is heat-sealed and cut.

And just 13 minutes after baking,

they're still warm as they head off to be boxed up.

The packs are grouped into eights.

One robot arm puts them in their box and another one tapes it up,

ready for a pecking palletiser.

I love this one. I love him.

It looks like an enormous chicken, picking corn.

You've got robots everywhere!

Yeah, it's a big machine, this.

This will pallet 600 packs an hour.

But you've already got people over there doing it as well.

We have, and it's crucial that we have these people

at the end of the line. If we stop, they need to pack by hand.

So no matter how fast and efficient the robot is,

not as adaptable as people, right? Correct.

I prefer people because they can have a chat.

That's right. Come on, then.

If the robot chicken falls off its perch,

the human backups don't do badly.

Jill and her colleagues can box up 500 an hour.

That's just over seven seconds each,

and that sounds like something I could help with.

Jill, are you going to instruct me?

I am. I'm going to show you what to do.

I'm pretty good at this lark.

I've been to many factories, Jill.

We'll see. I'm going to leave you to it. All the best.

Pick up a box, press it down.

Push that one back. Yeah.

Bombs away!

And then put eight packs in,

close the flaps

and push it through.

Oh, I say! Five, six, seven. This is a doddle.

Jill, you've been having people on. This is easy.

Oh, no, it's not! Oh! I forgot to shut the flaps.

What was you saying, Gregg? I'm sorry.

One, two... All in the same way. No-one will know, will they?

When they open my malt loaf, I don't...

I think I've got that the wrong... HE LAUGHS

It's what they call dog's dinner.

You need to be a bit faster, though, Gregg.

I tell you, take my tip,

why don't you slow down the conveyor belt?

All right, all right. Stop!

Stop. Halt production.

Jill, I'm sorry. Whatever you do, Gregg, don't come here for a job.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

In the two hours and 15 minutes since I triggered

the flour delivery, the factory has

mixed, baked, wrapped and stacked

my 6,000 loaves.

And now they're ready to be dispatched.

Well, I made a bit of a mess, but we got there, right?

Right, let's get this loaded.

It's only right that John, who helped me unload the flour,

is here to help me get my loaves on the road.

Hi, Gregg. You've been busy, haven't you?

What do you reckon? Well done.

Yeah, one full pallet.

Shall we take it over there and get it wrapped? Please.

I'm actually quite proud of myself. Good, you should be.

OK.

And that's it. All done? All done.

The loaves are sent straight from the factory to distribution centres

across the country, maturing as they go.

26 pallets are sent straight onto the truck.

Each one holds 176 cases, so there

are more than 180,000 loaves

on this load alone,

and two of these lorries

are dispatched every day.

These mini loaves are sent all across the UK,

but it's England that enjoys them the most, and malt loaf has its fans

as far afield as Canada and Australia.

Your pallet's on the way now.

Fantastic. Fantastic.

Do you know what that is? What?

Using your little loaf, that is. It is indeed.

It's a slick operation here, and I'm really impressed

by the amount of work that goes into making

these squidgy little teatime treats.

I've savoured it all...

Oh-ho! Back of the net!

..from the super-sized machines...

That is the biggest cake mix I have ever seen!

..to baking on a massive scale.

Remarkable, that is like a wall of heat.

But what really blows my mind

is to guarantee the perfect sticky texture,

these little loaves are still maturing inside the wrapper

on their way to the shops.