Original subtitles

Whether you prefer yours covered in honey...

- ..sprinkled with cheese...

- ..or - my favourite - just slathered in melting butter...

- ..you can't beat a traditional crumpet.

- As a nation, we're crumpet crazy,

eating a staggering 23 million of them every week.

And to find out how this great British treat is made,

I've come to a factory that produces 432 million of them every year.

I'm Gregg Wallace,

and tonight, I'm uncovering the secrets of crumpet production -

from crucial chemistry...

Oh, there's bubbles! There's bubbles!

..and super-scale baking...

They look like bowls of tapioca. - That's it.

- There's loads of lumps in these.

..to high-tech helping hands.

Do they ever get repetitive strain injury?

Crumpet elbow!

- I'm Cherry Healey...

- OK. - Wow!

..and I've come to Manchester to find out...

Oh! - And the next one.

- ..about another British classic.

A small pastry filled with raisins has been baked here for centuries.

I mean, it's all the good stuff.

And back at home, I'm finding out

if science can help me perfect the pancake.

- When you're beating it,

one of the things you're doing is you're helping gluten form.

- Meanwhile, historian Ruth Goodman...

- Oh! Oh, that's disgusting!

- ..discovers how our craze for toasting took us from coal fires...

- I'm toasted. Look.

- Oh, you are!

- ..to a new but deadly...

- Oh, my gosh!

- ..kitchen appliance.

- It looks like something out of a torture chamber!

- You could be killed instantly.

- This factory makes more than a million crumpets every single day,

and I'm going to reveal how they do it.

Welcome to Inside The Factory.

This is the Warburtons factory in Burnley,

where 268 staff make 520 tonnes of baked goods every single week.

On this five-acre site,

they produce everything from sandwich loaves to pittas,

from pancakes to potato cakes.

But today I'm learning how they make a British classic, the crumpet.

They're an eccentric kind of treat

made from a precise combination of ingredients.

To begin unravelling the mysteries of crumpet creation,

I'm at the intake bay

to meet quality controller Stuart Jones.

Hey, Stu! - That's right.

- I'm guessing that's flour, right?

- Yes. That's specifically crumpet flour,

and there's 13 varieties of wheat in there.

- But they all look exactly the same.

- No, they're all different, Gregg.

Just to make bread, for example, you need a high-protein wheat.

To make pastries, you'll want to reduce that amount of protein.

And to make the perfect crumpet,

we need those 13 varieties which are providing

all the characteristics that deliver the crumpet we want.

- What do you need? You need sponginess?

- Yeah. Some might be providing softness,

some give the crispness, and some give the taste to the crumpet.

- Do some of these make the holes that the butter falls in?

- That's the important bit.

- The wheat mix in here gives you holes?

- The way we bake it and the wheat varieties give the holes

in the finished crumpet. - Mate, I'm getting an education here!

That is brilliant. - Yeah.

- The wheat has already been milled to make this load of white flour.

So how much white flour on there?

- Yeah, we've got 28 tonnes of white flour in there, Gregg.

- How many crumpets is that going to make?

- That's about 1.1 million crumpets.

- GREGG LAUGHS

And how often do you get a delivery a week?

- We'll get one of those deliveries every single day.

- The factory works around the clock seven days a week,

so I mustn't hold up this delivery a moment longer.

This one? - Yeah. Hit it.

- That's it. - There we go. We're ready to go. - We're unloading, right?

We are under way. We're not going to stand here for an hour, are we?

- No, we're not standing here, Gregg. We're going to go to premix.

- Is it warm in there? - It's a lot warmer than here, Gregg, yes.

- It's freezing out here, innit? - It's freezing, yes.

- As the flour begins to flow from the tanker,

the clock on my crumpet production begins.

I'm making a batch of 3,000,

and the flour will be stored in these giant 20-metre high silos

until it's needed on the production line.

But I'm heading from intake straight into the factory.

Oh, I like that.

Where are we?

- This is the premix area, Gregg. - Premix area?

- Yeah. Rather than weighing out all the individual ingredients

that we would add as well as the flour, we've made a premix.

- And what's in it?

- So in there we've got some baking powder, sugar,

we've got some calcium propanoate... - Hang on a minute.

Right, I know what baking powder does - it helps things rise.

- Yes, that's right. - Sugar - a little bit of sweetness.

- Yeah. - What's the other one?

- Calcium propanoate. That helps with the shelf life of the product.

- How does it do that?

- It changes the acidity,

and the acidity is an alien environment

for the mould growth that could take place.

- It stops mould? - Yeah.

- This natural additive is found in most of the baked goods we buy

to prevent green mouldy spots growing on the surface.

Should we get this up and away?

- Yeah. Andy, do you want to come in? - Yeah.

- Looks very 'andy!

CHUCKLES

Can I have a go at this? - Course you can. - Yeah?

Left and right? - Yes. - And that's up and down? - Yep.

- Every two days, a one-tonne bag of premix is hoisted into position.

So put the straps on, and then it's up and away? - Yep.

Slowly. - You're not going to leave me, are you?

- No, no. You're all right, go on.

- It takes four of these bags to keep the production lines running,

making a whopping 2.4 million crumpets.

- Keep going. - Whoa! - It's all right, keep going.

- That's a lot of breakfast ruined if I get this wrong.

But it's swinging a little bit, innit?

And then lower it? - Yep. Slowly, though.

- Agh!

I don't like it swinging.

- It'll sit in its perch when it gets to the bottom.

- Whoa.

GREGG EXHALES SHARPLY I don't like the responsibility,

Ooft. Right, what happens now?

- We need to cut the tie.

And if you look inside and look up, you'll see the bottom of the bag.

- Oh, yeah. With a kind of blue shoelace attached. - That's it.

I want you to cut that, but I'm going to have to ask you

to put on some protection before you do.

- That's just so I don't breathe in dust?

- That's all it is, Gregg, yeah. We want to look after you.

- There's a tonne of premix a metre above my head, so safety first.

- Have you got it, Gregg?

- No. - Don't spill any now.

- Whoa!

Agh! Argh!

Did anyone see?

Did it...? I'll stand here for a minute, Andy.

Argh!

HE LAUGHS

- I told you not to spill any, Gregg!

- Oh, no!

I think I might have messed that up.

- I'm sure we can clear it up.

- So what have we got? Have we got a tonne?

- Yeah, just about.

- I might need a bit of closer supervision.

- That's all right, Gregg. My trousers are a right mess!

- Stuart assures me that none of the spilled premix

will end up anywhere near production,

so fingers crossed there are no more mishaps further down the line.

Next stop, the mixing area to find out what happens

to the ingredients for my batch of crumpets.

And I'm all cleaned up, ready to meet the quality manager...

Phil?

..Phil Tucker.

- So this is where we're going to put all of the ingredients together

to form our batter that will turn into finished crumpets.

- So what are you mixing in here, then?

- We've got the flour and the premix that you've already unloaded,

and that will make up about 50% of our batter mix.

Because it's a batter, we need to add some liquid ingredients,

which will make up the other 50%.

- Batter is a mix of wet and dry ingredients,

and for my crumpets, they're mixed in this blending tank.

The wet ingredients are water, salt solution for flavour,

and yeast, a single-celled living organism used in baking

to create a rise.

- And obviously you can't see what's happening inside the blender,

but we can do an experiment to show how that works.

- I've heard... I hope I'm not offending you.

I've heard you've got a nickname.

- The King of Crumpets, Gregg.

- Why?

- Because crumpets is my product, Gregg. I look after crumpets.

- Are you a married man?

- I am a married man. - Does your wife know what your nickname is?

- She does now, Gregg.

- THEY LAUGH

To show me what's happening inside the blending tank,

the Crumpet King has measured out ingredients

to make a small batch of batter.

Into the flour, I'm adding the premix containing baking powder,

then the salt solution, water,

and finally, yeast.

- And away you go. Give it a really good whisk.

- How long do you want me to whisk this for?

- Just until you form a batter.

- As the ingredients are stirred together, the baking powder reacts

instantly with the liquid in the mix,

and this chemical reaction produces carbon dioxide,

and that causes the batter to begin rising as the gas forms.

Oh, there's bubbles! There's bubbles!

There's bubbles!

- And it's those bubbles that will form the key part of our crumpet.

- Is the bubbles where we get the holes in the crumpet?

- Absolutely, Gregg. - The holes are burst bubbles?

- That's it. - I never knew that.

I never knew that!

I need 180 kilos of bubbly batter to make my batch of 3,000 crumpets,

and it'll take seven minutes till it's perfectly blended.

Our love of crumpets goes back centuries,

but it wasn't easy to get them bursting with bubbles,

as Ruth's been finding out.

RUTH: Soft and crispy, covered in holes to fill with melting butter -

it's no wonder the crumpet is one of Britain's favourite snacks.

But how did this popular teatime treat rise to fame?

I've come to Harvington Hall in Worcestershire,

where historian Dr Polly Russell is going to reveal

how the crumpet evolved into the holy marvel we know today.

Polly! - Hello! - Hello!

Tell me about crumpets. Where do they start?

- Well, I think we should start with an amazing woman

called Elizabeth Raffald.

Born in 1733, Elizabeth Raffald was a housekeeper

for the aristocracy, a cook, and a cookery writer,

and she produces a cookery book

called The Experienced English Housekeeper in 1771.

The very last recipe is...

- Oh, tea crumpets!

Can we have a go at making them?

- I think we should.

- This is one of the first references to crumpets

in an English cookery book.

But unlike today, these early crumpets contain eggs...

We want to beat those? - Yeah.

- ..and a quart or litre of warm milk and water.

Well, it's a bit warm. - Yeah. That's fine.

- OK, ready? - Yeah.

- Then the recipe calls for

"as much fine flour as will make them thicker

"than a common batter pudding."

That's looking much more batter-y.

Back in the 18th century, they didn't have tubs of baking powder

or dried yeast to make baked goods rise.

All they had was this frothy stuff.

- Barm is the scum that you get off the top

of a fermented liquid, like beer or wine. - Right.

And that would be something that people had around their houses?

They'd be used to making their own beer?

- They would, and so you'd be able to use this

in your sort of everyday cooking.

- Barm is actually a form of yeast,

so it produces carbon dioxide

as it consumes the sugars in the flour.

But will this barmy batter make a recognisable crumpet?

"Pour a large spoonful of batter on your stone."

"Let it run to the size of a tea saucer."

But these first tea crumpets are more like pancakes.

The barm hasn't given it the height of a modern crumpet,

nor the holes on top.

You can see bubbles in the texture when you tear it, can't you? - Yeah.

- There is a little bit of a rise there.

Not much. - No.

- But there was another rather unusual raising agent

which might deliver a more bubbly batter,

and Polly's made up a batch with that.

- Hartshorn is an old English name for deer antler,

and if you shave them and then grind them,

probably in a pestle and mortar, you create a powder.

And this was used as a raising agent, certainly in the 1700s,

but actually probably for thousands of years.

You know, antlers are used as tools.

Probably shaping a tool, this fell into some flour and some water.

Who knows? - And people saw the effect.

- Exactly.

- The boosted, bubbling effect happens because of a chemical reaction.

The powdered horn is an alkali, and when mixed with the milk,

it produces carbon dioxide gas, making bubbles in the batter

and improving the rise.

- OK, let's give that a little look.

- But it also creates an unwelcome by-product.

Oh! Ugh!

Oh, that's disgusting!

- Oh, that is absolutely rank, isn't it?

- That is really foul.

What is making that smell?

- It's producing carbon dioxide,

but it's also producing ammonia, and that's what we can smell.

- I don't care how bubbly it is, that's not for me. - No.

- But thank goodness, in the mid 19th century,

the invention of a revolutionary new ingredient

could make bubbly crumpet batter without the whiff.

- So this is sodium bicarbonate, and this creates a chemical reaction,

and then you get the bubbles and the rise.

- So it is, as you say, like the hartshorn,

but without the nasty ammonia.

And it's still a staple of modern kitchens, isn't it?

I mean, who hasn't got a pot of sodium bicarbonate, you know?

- Exactly. - It's the thing that makes plain flour into self-raising flour.

And in the 1840s, the development of another raising agent -

baking powder - made getting a rise even easier.

It's a convenient mix of the alkali sodium bicarbonate

and an acid such as cream of tartar,

a powdered by-product of winemaking.

Meanwhile, the rise and rise of crumpets was further aided

by the invention of a metal cooking ring.

So this is to make the uniform shape and also to allow us

to have a deep depth of batter. - That's right,

and this is what we need for a crumpet. - Shall we give it a go?

- Let's try.

- The Industrial Revolution brought a boom in the production of more

and cheaper metal goods,

bringing inexpensive crumpet rings to the masses.

- Moment of truth.

Shall we tear one in half? - Tear one in half.

That has really risen.

- Definitely a better rise.

- So let's have a go, see what this is like.

- I mean, it's not bad, is it? It would be a lot better with butter.

- Mm-hm. - But it's an...

- Approaching what we have in our minds as a crumpet. - Yeah.

- Victorian vendors capitalised on the rising taste for crumpets,

selling them warm on London streets.

250 years after the first crumpet recipes appeared in print,

the evolution of raising agents had seen them elevated

to the plump, holey favourites we enjoy today.

Mm!

GREGG: Back at the factory in Burnley,

Phil, the King Of Crumpets, has shown me how baking powder

produces bubbles in my crumpet batter.

There's bubbles! There's bubbles!

But that's just the beginning of the bubble story,

so I'm following the batter from the mixing area to fermentation.

More tanks. - Yeah.

So the batter that we've just created down in the blender

is being pumped up into here for fermentation.

- Fermentation is something you do with beer.

It's not something you do with baking.

- You're right, Gregg, but it's actually also a key part

of the crumpet-making process.

- Inside the tank, the yeast feeds on the sugar in the batter

and produces even more carbon dioxide.

The gas inflates the bubbles produced by the baking powder,

making them larger.

A paddle stirs the batter to knock out some of the gas,

otherwise the bubbles would get too big,

and cause the mixture to overflow from the tank.

So how long in here?

- For a minimum of ten minutes. - Fascinating.

I'm loving this. I don't think you should be Crumpet King.

You are Mr Bubbles! Come on.

But before my batter can be crumpeted,

it has to be quality controlled.

Through the processes of mixing and fermentation,

the batter's got its bubbles, and has become thicker.

But is it the perfect texture to be made into crumpets?

Mate, sprinkle a bit of chocolate in there,

little nip of whisky, I'll take it up to bed!

Normally, the batter is tested automatically

inside the fermentation tanks, but Phil's devised another experiment

to check if it's ready for the next stage of production.

- So the flow test is going to test the viscosity of our batter.

- Timing how quickly or slowly that runs through there

is going to tell you how thick or thin that is? - That's right, Gregg.

- So if it's too thick, what would happen to the crumpet?

- So if it's too thick, it would be over-fermented, so the bubbles

would be too big, we would have quite a weak crumpet.

- You'd have a weak crumpet?

- A weak crumpet, yeah. - And if it's too thin?

- We wouldn't get the volume of crumpet that we needed

and we wouldn't have the right number of holes that make it

light and fluffy inside, crispy on the outside.

- And what speed is it supposed to come through here?

- I can't tell you that, I'm afraid, Gregg. That's a secret.

- Well, how do I know whether that's right or not, then?

- Well, you've got a timer there. When the buzzer goes off, we'll have

a look at how much batter's flowed through, and we'll be able to tell

you if it's the perfect batter. - Right, what do you want me to do?

- There's a hole in the bottom of that, so you need to put your finger

over the hole so it doesn't run through.

So pour it in, fill it up to the top. - Ha-ha!

I love these games!

It's all warm and sticky.

To pass the test, exactly the right amount of batter needs to drop

through the funnel in a given amount of time.

- OK, that's enough. So you need to start the timer

and release your finger.

- I'm not sure I can stand the tension. You ready?

- And when the buzzer goes off,

you need to put your finger back over the hole,

and we'll have a look at how much batter we've got.

- Trouble is, I don't know how much batter's got to fall

or how long it'll take, because these are Phil's secrets.

Ooh, it's looking a bit thick to me, Chef.

- Ah, it's looking lovely. - Ooh, that's a bit thick, that.

You sure you've got enough holes? - Absolutely fine, Gregg.

- TIMER BEEPS

Oh, oh!

- OK, let's have a look at how much batter we've got.

Absolutely perfect, that, Gregg.

- So we can go and make some crumpets?

- Yeah, let's go.

- There's another batter-based treat that we Brits love - pancakes.

But they can be pretty tricky to get right,

so Cherry's flipping through the science

of how to make the perfect one.

CHERRY: Ah, pancakes!

If you're like me, they never seem to go to plan.

And often, I end up with something like this.

So I'm teaming up with scientist Dr Stu Farrimond.

Thank God you're here. I've had a bit of a pancake emergency.

Come in.

He's transporting his lab to my kitchen

to see if some scientific methods can improve my results.

- The reason why many of us struggle to make a pancake

is that a third of us only make pancakes about once a year,

so we're really out of practice. But with a bit of science,

I can show you how you can make the perfect pancake every time.

- All right, let's get cracking.

We're following a recipe

for the nation's favourite crepe-style pancake...

..making a batter from plain flour and semi-skimmed milk.

We don't need baking powder or yeast as this batter doesn't need to rise.

And unlike crumpets, we're adding eggs

to give our pancakes a rich flavour and light texture.

Can you under-beat a batter, and can you over-beat a batter?

- I think it's very difficult to over-beat a batter.

When you're beating it, one of the things you're doing

is you're helping gluten form,

which is this webbing-like mesh of protein - gluten,

and that's what gives it its bite and its structure.

- So no need to hold back on my beating,

as the gluten molecules allow the mixture to bind together

to give the chewy texture I want.

A batter is beaten.

Let's cook.

- First, we rest.

- We rest? - We rest.

- Why do you rest batter?

- You rest it so you're giving more time for the gluten to form.

The longer you leave it, the more gluten will form,

and so the better bite we will have with our pancake.

- While my batter rests, there's time for Dr Stu to check if it's my

cooking technique that's scuppering my attempts at perfection.

The problem is that my first pancake is always a complete disaster.

Inedible.

- So many of us have this problem,

and the reason is that your pan isn't hot enough,

and you don't have the oil spread evenly across the bottom of the pan.

- The ideal temperature is between 130 and 150 degrees Celsius,

and the probe tells us we're just right.

One.

We're using a mixture of butter and vegetable oil.

Two.

Why not just use butter?

Why do you need to use vegetable oil as well?

- Butter has quite a low smoke point,

and we need a really high temperature,

but we can get those buttery flavours by adding

just a little bit of butter to oil, which has a much higher smoke point,

it doesn't burn as easily. So we get the best of both worlds -

a bit of the buttery flavour

and without the problem of the butter scorching and burning.

- With our batter fully rested, it's time to cook.

It's fry time!

- Almost, but I'm going to give you one extra little tip

that's going to make your pancakes brilliant. - Oh, wow.

- So what we do is we take out most of the oil,

because we don't need all that oil and butter.

We only need a very thin coating of oil across the bottom.

- That's amazing! OK, I'll get some kitchen roll.

Wiping off the excess oil and butter is, of course, healthier too.

Time to bring on the batter.

How do you know if you've got the right amount in your pan?

- Well, ideally, you want at least a couple of millimetres at the bottom,

so as long as it's covered very evenly, you're going good guns.

- Is that about right? - I think that's about right.

You've got a good amount. - Do I now leave that alone?

- We want to leave it at least a minute or two just so that it cooks.

- Cook your pancake on one side

until all the liquid batter has turned solid.

Now it's the bit that I've been dreading,

and I'm not sure that even science can sort my technique.

What's the secret to a great flip?

- The great flip is all in the wrist.

You don't want to lift it straight up because it'll form a vacuum

underneath the pancake and that causes it to wrinkle up

when you try and lift it. - OK, so what do you do?

- Slide off the edge of the pan. - OK.

- And then we give it a flip.

- Wahey! You did such a good job! OK. Ready?

Agh!

Oh, whoops. Anyway. - Pretty good. - OK, I didn't break it.

- Awesome. Yes, they're not looking too bad, are they? - OK, back on,

back on. - Back on to finish it off. - Not too bad.

So it's nearly done. - Nearly done. - Nearly there.

- When it's brown, you're good to go.

- My first pancake that didn't look like a big bowl of paste!

- Amazing. - Hurray!

OK, I'm really happy with that.

- I think mine looks better. - I think the proof is in the pudding.

- The proof is in the pancake tasting.

- Thank you very much. Let's go and eat.

Stu's scientifically-prepped pancakes certainly look better

than my previous attempts, but how do they taste?

- I think they're both good. - They're both great.

So because it's had more time to form that gluten,

it's got a better structure, a better foundation,

so when it's in the pan, it's even and it cooks consistently.

- Absolutely, yeah. - That is definitely the most perfect pancake

I have ever made by quite a long way.

So for the perfect pancake,

mix your milk and egg into your flour, not the other way around,

make sure the pan is hot enough,

slide before you flip...

Yay!

..and of course, rest your batter.

Well, these science tips have helped me make the perfect pancake,

and I can safely say I've made a bit of progress.

GREGG: Back at the crumpet factory,

we're one hour and 32 minutes into production.

My batter is piped from the fermentation tanks

to the start of the line, known as the crumpet plant.

Four hot plates, stretching 15 metres,

are kept going around the clock.

At the top of each one sits a 1.5 metre tall depositor,

where I'm meeting manufacturing site lead Peter Kirrane.

Peter? - That's right, Gregg.

- This needs some explaining. What is this?

- Well, this is where it all happens, Gregg.

This is where we actually bake the crumpets.

- This impressive machine squeezes my batter through each

of its 11 nozzles onto the hotplate below,

depositing 11 crumpets every three seconds.

What weight of mixture have you got going in there?

- 65g out of each deposit, Gregg.

- Into these little pie dishes?

- Yeah, those pie dishes are crumpet rings.

- The pre-greased steel rings measure 95 millimetres across

by 28 millimetres deep,

and are just like the ones from the Victorian era.

- Got about 15 metres long of hot plate here.

It's divided up into three sections

that do different things to the crumpet as we go down the line.

- There are 2,332 rings passing across the hotplate,

which acts like an enormous griddle.

Underneath, five gas burners heat the metal to 175 degrees,

and it holds its temperature as it moves through

the three stages of crumpet baking.

So if I put these in an oven at 170 degrees, would that work?

- No. - Why?

- Because you need to bake from the bottom at a hotplate scenario,

rather than baking around the rings.

- Being baked from below ensures the top and bottom

of the crumpet are different.

It's the key to why it's just the top that's full of holes.

- If you just look under there, Gregg,

you'll see like a flat batter in that crumpet ring. - Yeah.

The bowls at the start look like a bowl of cream.

By the time we get to here, they look like bowls of tapioca.

- That's it. - There's loads of lumps in them. - That's it.

- So that's stage one. - Perfect.

- The lumps are in fact the bubbles

which have already been formed by the baking powder

and fermenting yeast in my batter mix.

The hotplate is now causing those bubbles to expand

before my very eyes.

How's that work?

- In the blending process, we aerated that mix,

and we blew the bubbles up through fermentation with CO2.

What's happening here now is that baking powder from premix

is hitting that hotplate, and we get a release of CO2,

which is pushing those bubbles up through the middle of the crumpet

and developing some flutes inside that crumpet.

- Flutes are the little tunnels that are created

when the bubbles rise to the top of the crumpet,

forced upwards by the re-activated CO2.

As they pop out through the surface, they create a pattern of holes.

They're bursting! - That's stage two.

- The bubbles are bursting! - They burst through the top.

- Agh! And that is...

That is going to be your crumpet surface.

- # Bubbles, they bounce Bubbles, they bounce

# Bubbles, they, bubbles, they

# Bubbles, they bounce Bubbles, they bounce

- # I like the sound of bubbles popping... #

- At the same time as the holes are forming on the top,

the bottom of the crumpet is being crisped up

by the heat of the hotplate.

- # I like the sound of bubbles popping... #

- So we're baking along there the same temperature, about 175 degrees.

It's going crispy on the base

and around the sides where the ring is,

and that'll start to solidify at this stage.

- # Bubbles, they, bubbles, they

# Bubbles, they bounce Bubbles, they bounce

# Bubbles, they bounce Bubbles, they... #

- As the water in the batter turns to steam,

it's released out of the holes on the top of the crumpet.

Meanwhile, the protein and starch in the flours

begin to form the familiar crumpet texture.

- # Bubbles, they bounce... #

- You can see that the crumpets are now getting set solid,

so nice and crispy on the outside, fluffy in the middle.

- Stage three now, that is looking like a crumpet.

What sort of numbers are we talking about here?

- We're depositing every three seconds, 11 deposits.

That's 13,200 crumpets an hour.

And then we've got four of these crumpet plants,

so approximately 50,000 crumpets an hour

out of the plant - 1.2 million a day.

Crazy, innit?

- It takes just five minutes on the hotplate for the bubbles made

earlier by the baking powder and yeast to be released...

..creating the soft but crisp, chewy but light,

texture of this unique British bake.

At the last moment, the army of rings lift away

and, like a caterpillar track, circle back over the hotplate

to rejoin the start of the process.

Meanwhile, the crumpets march on,

straight into this enormous toaster.

- We need to give them a nice little toasting on the top,

get them to the right colour, so we've got two infrared grills there,

and the crumpets spend around 22 seconds in that grilling section,

and that's enough to give them a nice toast.

- The only reason you are putting some toasting on the top

is to give them colour, right?

- That's correct, yeah.

- Inside the giant toaster are 20 ceramic plates.

A mix of gas and air is burned in front of them,

generating infrared heat.

These infrared grills produce heatwaves of around 1,200 degrees,

toasting my crumpets 60% faster than a conventional grill.

Wow. So why do we put them in the toaster at home?

- To warm the crumpet up, to make it a bit fluffy.

It's a much better product when it's hot.

- But I could eat it like that now?

- Of course you can, Gregg.

We can't eat it here, but we can take it elsewhere,

so if you want to pick your own crumpet...

- I'll take a couple for quality control!

- Oh, go on, then. Come on.

- Right, can I? We're away from production.

- Yeah, you can now, Gregg. - Look at that.

Look, all the holes. Crispy bits there.

Then, of course, your toasty bit on the bottom.

- And all those flutes inside.

- Yeah. That is actually unique, isn't it, to a crumpet?

Right, come on.

Mm! Well, it's warm.

A little bit of salt. Actually, it's a little bit sweet as well, this.

But it's not the flavour, it's the texture.

It's that light fluffiness in the middle

and the crispiness both sides.

Holes! - It all comes together with the holes.

- And the yeast that's helped give it those holes

has also given it that comforting crumpet-y flavour.

Do you know what I think is part of its success?

It's actually the versatility - that it can be sweet or savoury.

- Absolutely. I prefer it sweet, though. - Yep.

Cup of tea and a bit of jam on top.

- Come on, then, Gregg, let's get that organised.

- I've tried one of my batch straight off the hotplate,

but most of the crumpets that leave this factory

will end up being toasted,

so Ruth's been exploring our obsession

with giving our baked goods a good grilling.

RUTH: Coal - the fuel that fed the factories

of a booming British economy from the mid-1700s onwards.

But did you know that it led to an all-time surge in popularity

of one of our favourite snacks -

toast?

To find out how coal became such a catalyst

for giving bread and crumpets the crunch,

I've come to Blists Hill Victorian town to meet another Ruth -

historian Ruth Cowan.

Ruth! Ah, there you are.

- Hi! - I bring you coal.

- Marvellous. - Thank you. - Let's get it on.

Lovely. - So when does coal become a domestic fuel?

- By the early 1600s.

Certainly by the 1700s and into the 1800s,

it was pretty ubiquitous.

- So we've got fires in all social levels of housing?

- Absolutely. Even your lowliest lodging rooms would have

at least one small coal fire,

and of course, wealthier people could afford a fire in every room.

- But why was coal so good for toasting?

Feel the heat coming off that! - Because that's the great thing

about coal - it lets off this enormous amount of heat,

and of course, if you're trying to toast by wood,

the chances are that your toast will end up sooty,

it'll be scorched because you've got to get it so close to the flame.

But with coal and a grate, you can hold it in front of the grate,

you've got that lovely hot heat,

and you can slowly get a lovely golden glow all over your bread.

OK, well, I've got some bread. I thought we could do some toasting.

- Oh, fabulous.

Thanks to the availability of coal,

a craze for toasting swept Georgian Britain,

and prompted a growing fashion for toasting forks.

- The beauty of toasting forks is that it can be anything

from just a bit of wire fashioned into some prongs at the end

to this one, which has a collapsible...

- Oh, yes, this one too. Slidey, slidey!

Armed with extravagant forks,

wealthy and aristocratic society truly embraced the toasting fad.

- A wealthy person wouldn't feel embarrassed

to toast a crumpet or a piece of toast.

That was acceptable because the wealthier you were,

the likelihood is that your kitchen was that much further away. - Right.

- So if you let the servants bring you your toast,

it's going to be stone-cold and chewy by the time you get it.

- I'm toasted. Look.

- Oh, you are!

And that's not much slower than a modern toaster. - It's not.

Mm!

- Delicious.

- While most people could afford a coal fire,

the next leap forward in toasting technology was just for the elite.

In the late 19th century, electricity began to be used

inside domestic homes, thanks to innovations

like Thomas Edison's light bulb.

In 1880, Cragside in Northumberland was celebrated the world over

as it was illuminated by electric bulbs,

which would prove to be a turning point for toast too.

I'm meeting inventor Stephen Wisdom to find out more.

So what on earth have light bulbs got to do with toast?

- Well, from the 1880s onwards, electric light bulbs

that they were using at that period had a metal filament in them,

a fine piece of wire. And when you pass electrical current

through that fine electric wire,

the electric energy gets transferred into light energy.

If you turn that dimmer, I'll give you a good example. - Yeah.

OK. So... - As the power goes through,

you get light. - Oh, yes. More power, more light.

- More power, more light.

But you also get heat.

- This was a real life light bulb moment for inventors,

who began to find different uses for the heat generated by electricity,

including toasters.

Stephen has constructed his interpretation of one

of the more outlandish prototypes.

Oh, my gosh!

It looks like something out of a torture chamber!

- So it's basically just a coiled filament around an element.

- So that's this wire going round and round and round and round

in a big spiral? - Yeah. - And what's it made of?

- That's made of iron, so we should get quite a lot of heat,

but not much light.

- Time to give it a go.

But for this experiment, we're using battery power.

So we're using 12 volts because...?

- Well, they would have plugged it into the mains,

and, look, that is a live coiled element there. - Right.

- If you reach in to, you know, turn your toast over,

you could be killed instantly.

- Although the wire could fry ME,

it's having less of an effect on the bread.

So that's hovering now about 70, 80.

And we've been waiting ten minutes and it's still not brown, is it?

- Not really, no!

- I mean, I to have to be honest, it'd be a lot easier and quicker

and safer to toast this in front of the fire.

- Yeah.

The big advance is nichrome wire, a different type of element.

- Nichrome wire was invented in 1905.

Made from nickel and chrome,

it was a more efficient heat conductor than iron.

Soon after, the American General Electric Company used it to produce

the D-12, the world's first commercially available toaster.

It only toasted one side of the bread,

but the bright sparks at General Electric described it as

"a source of pride for every modern housewife."

By the 1920s, improved designs brought toasters

closer to the appliances we know today.

They toasted on both sides and they had an in-built timer

that meant that your toast popped up.

Where once we had coal fires,

now more than 90% of us have an electric toaster in our kitchen.

And that's something to raise a toast to!

GREGG: Back at the factory in Burnley,

we're an hour and 37 minutes into production.

My crumpets have baked on the giant hotplate

and been given a fierce grilling.

Straight out of this massive toaster,

they pass through cooling rooms,

where their temperature falls from above 80 to less than 25 degrees.

I'm following my batch from the crumpet plant to packing.

Yay!

You know I visit lots of factories. I love these machines.

I could watch them for hours! Love 'em.

What is it actually doing?

- So what we have is it's got its own scanner there.

So if you see the white light just in the background there, Gregg.

- Yeah. - And the crumpets are just passing under it. - Yeah.

- Every single one of those crumpets has been scanned

as it comes through. So it's measuring two different things.

So the first thing is it tells the robot

exactly where each crumpet is on that belt,

so then the robot head can go and pick the crumpet and place it there.

And then the second thing that it does with the 3D scanner element

is it looks at the height of the product, the shape of the product,

and also looking for a bit of toasting on top of there.

Now, it can't actually measure all the holes in the crumpets,

but it's just looking at that top surface

to make sure it's just about right for us.

- So if there was a crumpet that didn't have the right holes,

wasn't the right height, the arms wouldn't pick them up?

- It wouldn't pick it, and it would just drop it out

into this basket for us down here.

- Can we check that?

- Course you can, Gregg. - So if I turn one of those upside down,

just simple as that... - Yeah.

- ..it'll reject it? - Yeah. Fire away.

- I did two to make it harder for the machine. - Oh, that's it.

You'll have it thinking now, you see, Gregg.

- So the white light's passing over my upside-down crumpets now.

- Yeah, that's correct. - So it's taken a photograph of them,

and it should be telling the arms to do, what? Not pick it up?

- It'll tell it not to pick that one, yeah.

- Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up.

Go on, pick it. Go on, go on, go on!

Oh!

That's just going to fall off the end, right?

- That'll just come down here, Gregg,

fall off the end, and end up in this basket there as a reject.

- And there go my two turned-over crumpets.

So how fast is it doing it?

- We've got 13,200 crumpets an hour coming down there,

and each one of these arms will pick at roughly 85 picks per minute,

so a little bit faster than the 13,200.

And we've obviously got another couple

of plants around there as well, so that brings us up to our

1.2 million crumpets a day out of the factory.

- Do they ever get repetitive strain injury?

- Yeah, they do. - Do they get crumpet elbow?

- We have to look after them a bit.

Bit of cod liver oil in the morning, and they're all OK to go!

- Not only are they really fast and really accurate,

but they must also have quite a gentle touch.

- Yeah, they are. So it's actually a vacuum head that picks that up,

so it's under suction. We have to be careful not to

put too much suction on there and pull the middle of the crumpet out,

so it is a very gentle operation.

- Got to be gentle, don't you, to lift up a load of holes?

- Absolutely.

- I love this factory's obsession with holes.

- It's what makes the crumpets, Gregg.

- And next door to picking...

..it's got to be packing, right?

More electronic arms.

- Yeah, that's right, Gregg. - You love your arms.

Are they the same arms that we saw earlier on?

- They're the same arms, Gregg, just doing a different job.

We have a layer card which is put on by the robot down the other end.

These arms are packing those crumpets in three stacks of three,

making nine, packing them into the sleeves.

We've actually got three cameras down here,

similar to the other cameras down the other end.

Can you see the scanner there, Gregg?

- Yes, I can. - Scanning every crumpet coming past

and giving the coordinates of each crumpet to each robot to pick.

- The robots can be programmed to pick either six or nine crumpets

per pack, depending on what the production line requires.

So once they're done now, what's this now,

they're getting their wrapper?

- That's correct, that's the flow wrapper.

We seal it around it underneath, the crumpets go inside,

and then we seal it either end as well.

- Hot wire? - Hot jaw.

- Hot jaw? - Yeah.

- Sealing the two ends of the wrapper, melting them together.

- Perfect, yeah.

- The hot jaw process seals the ends of the packs at a temperature

of 155 degrees, and it'll take just 13 minutes to seal

my batch of 3,000 crumpets into more than 300 packs.

They look puffed up. Have you put some air in there?

- Yes, we have, Gregg, some more CO2. A lot of CO2 in this process.

You can see there's a couple of yellow hose going on to it,

and that hose is inserting CO2, 0.2 grams per pack.

What that does is dispels the oxygen out of there for us,

and that helps get us a shelf life on the product and prevent

any mould growth because, there's no oxygen in there

for the mould to grow with.

- What is the shelf life of a pack of crumpets?

- Eight days from here. - Is that all? - Yeah.

We want as fresh product as we can.

- So the robot eye has passed over them,

they've now got their wrapper round them, little bit of CO2 gas.

They're ready to go, right?

- Just about, Gregg, but there's just one final check before

we can get them to go, and Hannah will take you through that

if you go down to see Hannah.

- Down the line? - Down the line, yeah.

- Thank you, Peter. - OK, you take care, Gregg.

- # 'Cos I'm movin' on up

# You're movin' on out

# Movin' on up

# Nothing can stop me

# Movin' on up

# You're movin' on out

# Time to break free... #

- As my crumpets near the end of their journey,

I'm meeting up with compliance co-ordinator Hannah Fishwick.

Are you Hannah?

- I am.

- And is this the final crumpet test?

- It is. - What is it?

- So this is a water bath test.

- What are you testing, to see if they can swim?

- So we're checking if the seal on the packaging is intact.

- Right, OK. How do you do that?

- Do you want to get three crumpets from your stack over there?

- Is that my batch? - Yeah.

- And then put them in the water?

- Yeah. - OK.

- And what we'll do now is put compressed air into the water bath.

The compressor will squeeze the packs of crumpets,

and if the seals aren't intact, the CO2 which we put in the packs

of crumpets will leak out, and bubbles will form in the water bath.

- So if that seal is ripped, bubbles would come out?

And we're putting pressure in here to squeeze the bags?

- Yeah, so if you put up to two bar of pressure.

- It's enough to push CO2 out of the bag, but not to burst it.

Well, I can see the bags being squeezed there, can't you?

- Yeah.

- This is the only time in the factory

that we DON'T want to see bubbles appearing.

That's quite a bit of pressure on those bags, right?

- Yeah. - It's squeezing the bag, but no bubbles are coming out.

- No, so that means they're sealed properly.

- All right, let's turn it off.

Just for my sake, for my curiosity...

..can we rip one and see?

- Yeah.

- # Splish, splash, I was taking a bath... #

- So we turn the pressure up,

and the pressure should squeeze the CO2 gas out of that bag.

- So that'll form the bubbles, which you can see there.

- Yeah, I certainly can. There you go. It's like a frog.

You put a big tear in that, didn't you? Clearly coming out.

- # Splish, splash, I jumped back in the bath... #

- Hannah does the water bath test

on samples from each of the four crumpet plants every hour.

If any produce bubbles, the whole batch is checked,

and the crumpets from poorly sealed packs go for animal feed.

We know my batch is fine, right? - Yeah.

- So what do I do now?

- So if you want to wheel your batch into dispatch now.

- And I'll let you take some other crumpets for a swim.

- Thank you. - Thank you.

Coming through.

We've got airtight containers.

We've got the right holes.

We're nice and fluffy. Let's go.

Crumpets are a firm favourite

as a breakfast or teatime treat around the world.

And there's another quirky British bake that's in global demand.

Cherry's hungry to find out how it's made.

CHERRY: I'm in Manchester on the hunt for something tasty.

A small pastry filled with raisins has been baked here for centuries,

and its popularity has really stood the test of time.

Eccles cakes have been made in Lancashire

for more than 200 years.

And since 1979,

this factory has been making mind-boggling amounts of them.

Overseeing this Eccles emporium is production director Ian Edmonds.

Ian, what is an Eccles cake?

- It's essentially dried fruit mixed with butter and sugar.

That filling is enveloped in a beautiful flaky pastry.

- I mean, it's all the good stuff.

How many Eccles cakes do you make in a day?

- We make 150,000 every single day.

- Ian, this isn't an enormous factory,

but that's an enormous amount of cakes. How do you do that?

- It's because we specialise in it.

It's a purpose-built bakery just for making Eccles cakes.

- So you make only Eccles cakes?

You don't want to talk about other cakes?

You don't look at other cakes? - No.

- If it's not an Eccles cake, it can hit the road.

- That's correct, yes.

- And these cakes are famous for their filling,

which is made from raisins and currants.

What is the difference between a currant and a raisin?

- Well, they're both made from dried grapes.

The currants are dark, almost like a black, small grape,

with a little bit of seed in it. - OK.

- Whereas a raisin doesn't have any seed and it's slightly larger.

- What different tastes do you get from each of these?

- Well, you get a more blackcurrant flavour from the currant,

and it's slightly sweeter, I would say, the raisin.

- A 50-50 blend of raisins and currants

is mixed with butter and sugar to make the sweet,

sticky, dark filling.

But it's the pastry that makes Eccles cakes so special.

And unlike crumpets, whose texture is based on bubbles...

Wow!

..the Eccles is all about creating the perfect flaky pastry,

and that means lots of butter.

Holy Moley! I can see who the star of the show is.

- Yeah, and it's all going to go in here.

- How much do we need?

- That block there? Do you want to put it in?

- Can I? - Yes, of course you can.

- All right, just like that?

- Yep, go on. - Oh!

- And the next one.

- Dish flour. - Go on.

- Ready? - Yeah.

- Flour is go!

As well as 70 kilos of flour,

we add salt water and milk,

and it's all brought together to create a whopping 180 kilos

of pastry mix, which is entrusted to the oldest machine in the factory.

How old is she?

- She's at least 55 years old.

- I hope I look that good when I'm 55.

- I'm sure you will.

It's got these two arms which come together and it kneads it,

like the old-fashioned baker kneading dough. - Right.

So this is what someone's hand would be doing,

you'd have two fingers getting in, and then you'd be

bringing the dough together? - Bringing the dough together.

And also, because it's very slow,

it doesn't raise the temperature of the dough. - Right.

- Today's mixers, they work very fast,

and they'll actually raise the temperature of the dough

by several degrees, and the butter will start melting.

- The rise in flaky pastry is created by keeping the lumps of butter

in the dough as solid as possible,

so they only melt when they hit the oven.

Butter is 15% water, so that when it melts, it produces steam,

which will separate the dough into flakes of pastry.

After 25 minutes of mixing, our pastry is ready.

It's pressed into blocks and chilled overnight

before we're ready to roll.

Whoa!

So what is going on?

- It's passing through the roller like an old-fashioned mangle.

- I think your machine is broken, because it keeps sending it through

and then bringing it back. - No, that's just continuously

reducing it down till it's the right thickness.

- The slab of pastry is rolled to precisely six millimetres thick.

- And there you have it - 15 kilos in 15 seconds.

- It's then sliced into 200 millimetre wide strips

and fed into this machine known as the blocker.

Specifically built for the factory,

it gently pushes the strips of pastry into cups,

which are filled with the raisin and currant filling

before being sliced into individual portions.

But the next part of the process requires the human touch.

Kirsty, can I help you?

- Yes, what you're about to do is just get four corners,

and then put the sides in.

- Kirsty Colburn has been working on this line for 19 years.

It's almost like wrapping a meatball in pasta.

- Yeah. - Can I do this one? - Yeah.

Yeah, that's good.

- How many do you think you do in a day?

- A good few thousand, I know that. - A few thousand? - Yeah.

- Once sealed, the cakes are flattened to a centimetre deep,

and four holes are punched into the top

so the steam can escape as the pastry bakes.

A quick spray of milk to ensure a golden brown finish,

and my Eccles cakes are ready for the oven.

What temperature are they at?

- 220 degrees Celsius.

- And how long? - 20 minutes.

- The heat of the oven quickly melts the butter in the dough,

releasing its water content as steam.

This separates the flakes within the dough,

giving the pastry its lift and texture.

Once out of the oven, the cakes are moved to the cooling room.

Oh, dear Lord, it's an Eccles cake cave.

Time to try my very first Eccles cake.

The pastry is so flaky, it's falling all over the floor,

I'm making a right old mess.

- But the filling is very juicy, isn't it? - Mm!

Is it just us in the UK who likes Eccles cakes?

- No, we sell them all over the world.

We've got these behind me going to the USA.

- Wow! - Those behind you, they're going to the Middle East.

- Oh, my goodness!

- And those at the back, going just down the road.

- From a factory in Greater Manchester to the four corners of the globe,

the love for the age-old Eccles cake shows no sign of abating.

GREGG: In Burnley, it's been two hours

since I started making my crumpets...

..and already, my batch of bubbly British classics

is on its way to dispatch...

..where I can get some facts and figures from warehouse

and driver trainer Garry Webster.

Is that my batch of crumpets?

- That's it, yes.

- How many trucks do you send out of this warehouse every day?

- 30 lorries every single day.

- How many packs of crumpets is that, do you know?

- 130,000 packs of crumpets.

- And do you send out lorries every single day of the week?

- Every single day, seven days a week.

- Well, that does prove that these are in high demand, right?

- They're in very high demand, so you'd better get that on the back

of that lorry so we can get it out.

- When will these be on the supermarket shelves?

- First thing tomorrow morning. - Oh, seriously? - Yeah. - OK. Crikey!

Yes!

That's it, right, ready to go?

- Ready to go out on the road.

- Very impressive operation. Come on, let's go and toast the crumpets.

- Yeah, come on, let's go.

- We're crumpet-mad right across the UK,

but people in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and the north-east buy the most.

And Brits abroad love a taste of home too,

as crumpets are shipped to places like Spain.

Do you have crumpets?

- Yeah, love them. - What do you have on them?

- Peanut butter. - Do you! - Yeah.

- That is a bit avant-garde!

Crunchy or smooth?

It's amazing, the attention to detail that goes into making

every bubble in every single one of our much-loved crumpets.

I've been blown away by this factory...

Whoa!

..from the sheer scale of the ingredients...

Argh! Ha-ha-ha!

..to the science of batter making.

The bubbles are bursting! - Burst through the top.

- Crumpets truly are a unique British treat.

Perhaps that's why we can't get enough of them.

All I need now is a bucket of butter.