Original subtitles

Today, I'm in Northern Ireland, in the town of Strabane,

in search of one of my favourite snacks.

Hello there, two sausage rolls, please.

Coming right up.

For today's factory, here's where it all began.

This bakery has been in this town since the 1940s.

Here you go. Thank you. Oh, boy.

Hey, you haven't paid for them!

Anyone?

Crew'll sort it.

But from small acorns...

..mighty oaks do grow.

Or in this case, sausage rolls produced on a mega scale.

Because that little bakery turned into this massive factory.

I'm Paddy McGuinness.

Leonard Nimoy, that's a big oven!

And tonight, I'm discovering the secrets...

Better go a bit smaller next time. Story of my life.

..behind the perfect sausage roll.

Ice? Are we having a G and T?

Why is it in a cage, this?

To stop you poking your fingers in there.

And Cherry's getting involved in the action as well.

That's right, Paddy. I'm confronting my fears...

Is there a big tub of blood somewhere?

..to find out what goes into black pudding.

OK, ready? Yep. Oop! That was quite... Got to catch it.

..slippery and slimy.

And historian Ruth Goodman discovers how the humble sausage skin...

Whoa!

..gave a real lift...

It's holding that gas.

..to a surprising weapon of war.

These production lines roll out half a million sausage rolls

every single day.

And I'm going to show you exactly how they do it.

Welcome to Inside the Factory.

Here we go.

Clock in... Yep.

This is McColgan's factory,

just down the road from the bakery in town,

and they make all kinds of stuff here.

From pies...

That looks like a chicken and ham.

Just waiting for the tops to be put on.

..to pasties.

Oh, I love a bit of ham and cheese.

Ah, we do chicken curry as well. Peppered steak also.

I'm staying here. I'm going to set up a tent in the corner.

But their best seller is the mighty sausage roll, made for many

of the UK's supermarkets.

And today, I'm going to be following the production of these Bakers Tray

jumbo sausage rolls that will grace the shelves of Aldi...

..and millions of dinner plates up and down the country.

Unsurprisingly, a key ingredient in your sausage roll is pork,

and bang on cue is a delivery of enough meat to make

two and a half million of them.

Get her unloaded, pal.

Right. Get the clock started.

That's fancy.

There's 27 tonnes of pork on here,

which will keep this place running for a week.

And it's sent straight to the extremely cold

meat preparation area.

Flipping heck! Freezing...

In charge is new product development manager, Edel Gallagher.

Edel, nice to meet you. Hi, Paddy. Lovely to meet you.

Are you OK, all right? I'm good, thank you.

They're not messing about, are they? Straight in. Straight in, yes.

We make tonnes of sausage rolls a day, so they need to get

at it straight away.

And I've got to be honest, Edel, I didn't think the sausage roll

factory would be like being in the Arctic.

Yes, all our rooms are temperature controlled,

which helps keep the meat fresh.

I imagined walking into here and big slabs of meat...

Have you seen Rocky... Yes. ..when he's punching...

I thought we were going to have a bit of that going on,

but they're all in little bags here.

Yes, so all our meats come in vacuum packed... Right.

..so they come in these bags of 10 to 20 kilos.

And that helps keep the meat fresher for longer here on site.

OK. What cuts of meat are you using?

So we use a combination of cuts.

So if you want to come over here with me, Paddy, I have some samples.

I'm just going to go and look at these samples, you carry on.

Thank you. Yeah, you're all right.

The factory uses cuts of pork from farms all over Ireland.

Oh, here we are.

OK, so here we have some of our pork loin, some of our fat that

helps give the flavour to our meat.

And then we have our leaner cuts of shoulder and leg that give

you the really meaty texture that you get in our sausage rolls.

What's the ratio in a sausage roll? What gets used the most?

So the probably most common cuts would be your shoulder and leg.

But all our recipes are top secret, so I can't give away

the exact ratio.

Every factory has a secret! It's all secret.

If I'm doing a roast dinner at home, what would the cut I'd normally

be putting on there?

So your cut of loin would probably be one of the most popular

for your Sunday roast. Loin. Yes.

You've got your pork loin, you've got your Sunday dinner out.

What are you putting on the side? What's your sauce?

Oh, you have to have your gravy.

Gravy? But do you go apple sauce?

No, I'm not an apple sauce person.

We've only just met and I feel as though we're getting

off on the wrong foot here.

EDEL LAUGHS

Now, silly question - I presume you like a sausage roll.

I do like a good sausage roll.

Do you like a picnic? Of course. I love a good picnic.

I'm so glad you said that, cos I've got to do,

in telly world, what's called a segue.

Cos we've got a historian, Ruth.

She gets around and she's going to tell us a bit

about the history of the picnic.

Ah, the picnic.

For me, it has to include cheese and pickle sandwiches, flask of tea

and a sausage roll.

But this genteel tradition is not the truth.

The real history of picnics is about revolution,

decadence, and debauchery.

And it all began not in the English countryside...

..but in the aristocratic salons of France.

Dr Alexander Lee is helping me to unpick the picnic's tumultuous past.

"Picnic". I mean, it's such a strange one, isn't it?

Where on earth does it come from?

Well, the story of the great British picnic begins in the summer of 1789.

CANNON FIRES

The French Revolution was kicking off with the

storming of the Bastille.

Many of the members of the French aristocracy started to flee France.

A great many came to England, and in doing so brought a culinary

practice that was really popular in Paris at the time - the picnic.

We don't actually know where the word itself comes from.

Most likely, it's a combination of two words -

the verb "piquer", which means to pick or to peck,

and "nique", meaning a little bit.

OK, So it's like little... Like little nibbles. ..little nibbles.

That's exactly right.

What we do know with absolute certainty is that by the early 18th

century, it was the peak of Parisian fashion,

but there was an important difference.

Unlike the picnic that we know and love today, these picnics

were held indoors. Indoors? Yeah.

Often, it used to take place in private homes or in hired rooms,

and everyone would bring a dish of their preference along.

In the hands of the French, it was a very genteel affair.

But when the British start to take it up, it becomes

something very different.

Inspired by these glamorous French immigrants, in 1801 an exclusive

new club was formed, known as the Picnic Society.

The Picnic Society events were very expensive.

It costs £6 or so to come to each event, which is

about £370 in today's money. Mm-hm.

And each person would have to bring along a dish like this,

along with six bottles of wine... Six?!

..three red and three white. Each? Each.

So this is excess.

It isn't about genteel discussion.

This is about eating and drinking till you burst.

Exactly, and having fun too.

There would be singing and dancing, like in this illustration

here from the period.

You can see a picnic orchestra playing away.

There might be gambling, too, but the principal entertainment

was always a play. OK.

This was pretty amateurish, you know,

after you've each had six bottles of wine. Right.

THEY LAUGH

These rowdy amateur dramatics were a great success, but soon

the shenanigans of the Picnic Society came under the scrutiny

of polite Georgian society.

Their popularity was really starting to ruffle a few feathers,

especially in theatre land.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was the owner of the Drury Lane Theatre,

was especially upset about the business he was losing

to the Picnic Society.

He was also a politician, and he used his influence

to try and get the Picnic Society shut down.

Sheridan claimed the picnickers were a threat to public morality...

..and the clash quickly became the talk of the town.

In this illustration here, called 'Blowing up the Pic Nics'

by the cartoonist James Gillray, in the centre you've got Sheridan

leading a little troupe of thespians.

I notice his very empty purse here.

Exactly. That's representing the business he's lost.

In another cartoon here, it insinuates that behind their

amateur theatrics lurk these orgies.

And there's a lot of female flesh on display there. Well, exactly.

Sheridan's relentless slur campaign eventually succeeded,

and the Picnickers disbanded in 1803.

But how did the picnic make the transition from outlandish indoor

parties to polite occasions in parks and gardens?

At about the same time as Sheridan was in his battle with

the Picnic Society, picnics were taken up by the emergent

English middle classes.

But there was one big difference, connected with the emerging

romantic movement.

This romanticism saw famous poets like William Wordsworth

and painters such as John Constable find artistic inspiration

in the beauty of the countryside, and picnics followed suit.

The romantic movement made the English countryside the epitome

of fashion, and it seems like this socially aspirant group

simply adopted the French word and changed it to suit their own

tastes, and they become an outdoors affair.

In 1816, Jane Austen's Emma has a picnic on Box Hill...

Oh, yeah! ..so it was clearly very much a part of the social landscape

by the early 19th century.

Super genteel, very refined.

Exactly. No dancing and partying with Jane Austen.

THEY LAUGH

Doesn't sound like much of a picnic to me.

All right, pal.

Back at the factory, Edel and the lads are weighing out

400 kilos of pork for my sausage rolls.

The interesting thing is, this fella here, you never see him

and our sound operator in the same room at the same time.

This is uncanny.

Enough messing about.

Looks like we're ready to rock the pork.

I tell you what, Edel, we're a long way off the picnic yet.

So, we're heading to the mincing area.

How many sausage rolls am I getting out of this?

That'll get us around 10,000 sausage rolls.

Wowzers! Yeah. 10,000!

And we'll just hoist it up into our mincer.

A quick press of the button

and the pork is emptied into the mincer.

Now, vegetarians might want to look away now.

The machine pulls the meat onto sharp metal plates, mincing

it into long strands between 5 and 8 millimetres thick.

Look at that!

OK. So as you can see now, Paddy, that gives you that nice

smooth texture that you want for your sausage meat. Yeah.

Should be still quite bland, so what we're going to do is go ahead

and get our seasoning blends mixed up.

Love it. I'll follow you, Edel.

Whew! That's spicy. What's in that seasoning?

So all our sausage roll recipes for our seasoning are secret.

But what I can tell you... Eh... ..is we do have a mixture

of black and white pepper in there. Right.

We have some sage, some thyme, and some mace as well.

Mace? Yes. What's mace?

So mace comes from the same plant as the nutmeg.

That helps bring out the natural flavour of the product

without being too overwhelming.

I have never heard or smelt mace, ever. Yeah.

But I totally get that in a sausage roll that I've eaten. Mm-hm. Yeah.

Next, we add 12 kilos of flour to help bind the spices and meat

together, along with three kilos of salt.

So now we're going to add in our final ingredient, which is rusk.

Rusk. So if you just lift that blue bag beside you... Yep. Yes.

Takes me back to my building site days. It used to be cement.

Now...

..what the hell is rusk?

So, rusk is basically like...

HE STRAINS, SHE LAUGHS

BOTH LAUGH

LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH

The rusk pulled me in! That pulled you in.

What is rusk?

So, rusk is basically like a breadcrumb,

so it's a yeastless version.

So it's very much like adding breadcrumb to your burgers at home.

It helps absorb the moisture, which really helps bind

the ingredients together.

You know, when my kids were babies, eating the Farley's rusks,

is that what that is? Very similar, yes.

Right, and we're going to put all this together now with the pork?

We are, yes.

We need to take this and combine it with our pork that we minced

earlier to get our sausage meat.

Into a huge mixer goes the pork...

..along with the spices and dry ingredients.

Plus 110 litres of water, which helps to distribute the seasoning

throughout the mix.

And then, something I wasn't expecting.

Ice? Ice. Baby.

Now, are we having a G and T, or why are we putting ice in?

It helps control the temperature of the sausage meat.

The meat can become a bit warm just due to the natural mechanics

of the machine, so this helps keep it between 3 and 5 degrees.

What's really important for when we get out onto the sausage roll

assembly line is the consistency needs

to be just right to go down the line.

When I saw the ice coming, I thought,

"I'm glad, because it's not quite cold enough in here."

Just not cold enough. "It just needs to be a little bit colder,"

just so I've got icicles on the end of my nose.

Then we're at optimum sausage roll temperature.

We're at optimum temperature.

The herbs, meat and ice mix together for five minutes...

..before a bit more mincing.

Oh, d'you know what? That smells lovely.

So, is that ready to go now?

Not just yet. We just have to let this filling now sit for 30 minutes.

That gives the ingredients, like the rusk, time to absorb

all the moisture and just give us a slightly firmer sausage meat.

Right. Shall we... Something I've not asked you while I've been here.

What's your favourite type of sausage?

Oh, that's a tough one. It is, innit?

That's a very tough one.

So, where do you stand on the black pudding?

Love it. Oh, I love a black pudding.

Do you know who loves black pudding? Cherry.

And she's off to my home county,

on the superior side of the Pennines,

to see how it's made.

I'm in Lancashire, famous for its hot pot, Eccles cakes

and a somewhat divisive sausage.

Black pudding.

I don't know much about black pudding, if I'm being honest,

but I do know that it's also called blood sausage, which can put some

people off a little bit, but not me.

So I've come to The Bury Black Pudding Company.

Production director Richard Morris comes from a long line of makers.

How long have you been making this pudding?

Me, personally? You, personally.

All my life. It goes back to my grandfather.

My grandfather was Vernon. They were pork butchers,

and they had a little outhouse where they used to cook stuff up.

Why is Bury known for black pudding?

The history is that it came from Europe as the monks

spread Christianity.

They were also pig farmers and made their own food.

History says they landed in Hull, east part of England, moved across,

went to the sunny side of the Pennines, settled here,

found Bury and that was it.

The earliest recipe for this sausage, or steamed pudding

made with pig or cow's blood, dates back almost 3,000 years.

Is there a big tub of blood somewhere?

There's no big tubs of blood. This is the blood as we know it.

That's the blood? It is, yeah.

I'm no doctor, but that doesn't look very like blood to me.

No, it's dried. Why do you use dried blood?

To actually transport it, it needs to be dry.

There's also no bacteria in it, so we can use this

over a 12-month period.

So is this everything you need to make a black pudding?

No. The blood makes up 5% of the product.

The rest is cereals, mainly. So what kind of cereals go in it?

You've got oatmeal here. That gives a good consistency to the product.

And then we have pearl barley. Why do you add pearl barley?

This will swell up to about three and a half times its size.

It's a good bolt, and my father said,

"If you don't cut your barley right, you'll never make money, son."

Barley is tougher than the other grains, so it's cooked separately

for one hour.

Meanwhile, the rest of the cereals, including rusk, are combined

with the dried blood in a snazzy mixer.

Do you think Vernon would have had one of these?

Um, he'd have probably gone, "Son, what are you doing?"

The blood is rehydrated with water before the cooked barley is added,

along with pork fat, which adds flavour and makes the black

pudding more succulent.

The final ingredient is onions.

Right, this is ready for pumping out.

Can I pull the lever? Yeah, away you go.

Oh, wow-wee, gosh!

This 600-kilogram batch will make an incredible

3,000 black puddings.

And now, it's time for the sausage making.

The mix goes into a machine called a vacuum filler, which pumps

it under high pressure into recyclable plastic casings.

And out the other end come black pudding sticks.

Next, 474 puddings at a time are wheeled into

a special oven for cooking.

It's not like a conventional oven.

It's steam-injected, so there's hot steam over 100 degrees put in there.

After an hour and 20 minutes, the puds emerge.

That is one big sausage of black pudding.

But, obviously, that's a bit big to fit on

someone's plate in the morning. It certainly is.

It would really be a struggle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

You'd be very full after all that.

So how do you slice this up?

So we put it on an ultrasonic slicer. Ooh!

I know, it sounds very posh. An ultrasonic slicer! Yes.

So this, basically, is a blade that will slice through here 42 times.

OK. But the blade itself is vibrating at

something like a thousand times a second.

So actually, the product doesn't stick to it.

So the blade stays clean.

How many of these long black pudding sausages do you chop a day?

We do about 3,000 sticks a day, five days a week,

and that makes about 120,000 actual slices per day.

Do we really eat that much black pudding?

Uh, yeah. We can't keep up with it.

Finally, the one-centimetre-thick slices are packed into

batches of four, ready for breakfast everywhere.

Back in Strabane, this place is bursting at the seams

with savoury treats.

Around every corner, there's another temptation.

Quiche Lorraine!

I enjoy them covered in baked beans.

Beautiful tea. Or dinner, if you live in the south.

But I've got to crack on.

Because while my iced sausage roll meat rests...

..it's time for me and Edel

to turn our attention to the other key component.

You know, I don't think there's many things that aren't improved

by wrapping it in pastry.

Exactly. I'd have it on everything.

Well, that's just where we're at now.

We're going to start making the dough

that will be used for our puff pastry.

Now, why puff pastry?

Puff pastry gives you those really light, flaky layers of pastry.

Gives you a really nice bite when you're eating the sausage roll,

which you just wouldn't get from a shortcrust pastry.

So we use a puff pastry.

Yes. So starting off in our mixing bowl here,

we have some margarine.

That's a fair old block!

And it's very similar to the margarine you'd have at home

in your kitchen. As well, we have some salt,

which helps with the flavour...

Yeah. ..and some ice as well. Ice?!

Ice. Baby!

HE LAUGHS

What is it with sausage rolls and ice?

It's really important that we keep the dough nice and cold

so that it works well on our production lines.

So now we need to put in our very last ingredient,

which is our flour.

Go on, then. Lead on, Edel.

Here we go!

66 litres of water are pumped into the mix

before 100 kilos of plain flour

are sucked down from a silo...

Whoa!

..and dumped straight into the mixing bowl.

There we go. There we go.

And the ingredients are ready to be skilfully...

What...? Edel, should I be under this?

No. Right, OK!

..steered over to the mixer.

So if you hit the down arrow there, Paddy.

After a quick whirl, my pastry dough is ready for inspection.

Oh, now, that looks a bit more like it!

Can I touch that?

You can, of course.

So you can feel now all the ingredients that we had earlier.

Everything's been combined together. Yeah.

And you can see how the dough

now has that little bit of a stretch to it. That's right, yeah.

This dough's now ready to go.

So, Mark, can you give us a hand taking this off? Hello, Mark.

Look at that!

Follow it on. Let's go!

Three hours into production,

and my great big load of dough

is tipped onto the pastry line...

..where, first off, it's rolled out onto a conveyor belt.

Looks a bit thick to me, that.

Here we go!

OK! There's our pas...

Hang on.

What the hell is this?!

So this is our pastry margarine.

That's really important for creating the layers in our pastry.

Well, where's that margarine coming from, then?

So that margarine there is coming from this pump right behind us.

It comes down here and travels through a series of pipes,

and it's extruded out through here.

Well, the margarine's coming through

and the pastry's getting wrapped round it.

Why is that happening?

OK, so we use what's called the French pastry method.

So basically what we're doing is putting a layer of the margarine

or fat in between every layer of pastry that we have,

and this is what gives you that really nice puff and lift

in between the layers when you're baking it up in the oven.

Which is what gives you them little separate sheets?

The separate sheets, yes. Beautiful!

The margarine-stuffed pastry passes through a set of rollers,

which flatten it to just four millimetres thick

before it emerges in a very intriguing way.

O-ho!

So this is where we start to put all those layers into the pastry.

This is what's called our lapping machine. Yeah.

So it's taking that layer of pastry with the margarine inside it

and it's folding it over multiple times,

creating eight layers with that margarine in between each layer.

Do you know what it reminds me of, that? When I look at this,

all at the side is a bit like when I bend over forward.

That's like a side view of me.

I think we all look like that! THEY LAUGH

Just like my muffin top,

these eight layers still need a bit of work.

The margarine and dough sandwich is folded and flattened

another eight times to deliver a tremendous 64 layers.

Look at that. It's still going!

More and more layers being done.

Finally, it's cut by a guillotine into two-metre-long sections.

Why are you putting them on there, on the rollers, then?

This pastry line serves all the production lines

that we have here in the factory,

so we're putting them onto the rollers,

we can just wheel them over to each individual production line.

The pastry dough is now eight millimetres thick

and incredibly contains all those layers.

The 64 layers of pastry is really important

when it comes to the oven,

because that layer of margarine in between the pastry,

that's when it'll start to melt,

and all the steam and moisture within the product when it's cooked

helps give you those lovely flaky layers.

Oh, they are the best!

But what is amazing about that 64-layer - that's a lot, but...

For the people... Look. Dan! Dan the Cam, come round here, pal.

Have a look at this.

64 layers.

But this machine...

..goes up to 100.

Imagine that! 100 layers!

We've gone full Spinal Tap on The Factory.

And there it is!

Have you ever actually run it at 100?

No. We keep it at the 64 layers.

Oh, I think you should!

The world's crying out for a 100-layer sausage roll, Edel.

I don't think we're ever going to top 100 layers!

I think this is a nice point for us to part ways, Edel.

It's been so nice. Nice. Baby!

That's enough Vanilla Ice references for anyone.

You know, they have me doing a few strange links on this show.

This has got to be up there with the best of them.

Sausages...

..World War I.

Ruth.

In the early years of the First World War,

for the very first time, our cities were attacked from the air.

German airships known as Zeppelins began a terrifying bombing campaign.

And it's in the shadow of an airship hangar in Farnborough

that I'm meeting historian Dr Victoria Taylor.

So this is an airship hangar frame, and it measures about 25m up.

It's about 80m long.

But what we've got to bear in mind

with the German World War I Zeppelins is that

they could be up to 150m in length,

so they were double this.

Can you imagine?

RUTH LAUGHS

That is absolutely enormous!

They could switch off the engines at 11,000 feet

and pretty much go silently

over a civilian or an industrial population.

So we have over 550 people killed,

we have about 1,357 people injured,

and so we start to get mass casualties of air raids,

which, of course, we've never seen before in history.

But how did these gigantic machines fly without making a sound?

And what has any of this got to do with sausages?

You might be forgiven for thinking that this entire Zeppelin

is simply filled up with hydrogen. Just a great big balloon.

Yes. And it's not? No.

So what it's actually consisting of

is all of these metal aluminium rigid struts.

So how do you get the lift, then, if it's this sort of frame?

Well, that's the clever part.

This is a spherical gas cell.

It's known as a ballonet,

and when it's filled with hydrogen, which is very, very buoyant,

it helps to lift the entire structure into the air.

Oh, it's lots of balloons!

It's lots. So it's 17 different gas cells in one Zeppelin.

But what's even more surprising is actually the material they used

to do this, to coat the gas cells.

And it was sausage skins.

Sausage skins? Yeah! I know!

You think it's going to be

the height of technological achievement.

This surprisingly rustic material was needed in huge quantities.

During the war, 115 Zeppelins were built,

so Germany needed a plan to guarantee enough sausage skins.

And the numbers were staggering for just one of these mega machines.

Ultimately, to make this, you needed

between 350,000 to 400,000 cow guts to do this. No!

Yes, and ultimately, the Germans realised

they've got to make a sacrifice for Kaiser and Country.

They have to give up their sausages in World War I. Really?! Yes.

So if you look here... Oh, my goodness!

"Each butcher was required to deliver the ones

"from the animals he killed. Agents exercised strict control

"in Austria, Poland and northern France,

"where it was forbidden to make sausages"! Forbidden to make them!

So they weren't only just policing it in their own country.

Any occupied territories they took during the First World War,

it was banned.

So what is so special, then,

about cows' intestine?

Why on earth would you use that to make a balloon?!

It's actually perfect for covering a gas cell, because within cows,

they have naturally-occurring gas within their intestines,

so immediately they're impermeable.

It's pretty durable, it's actually quite elastic,

and ultimately, it's actually safer, because, of course,

hydrogen is really, really flammable.

But if you have this, it's actually far better at

protecting against electric sparks.

And they don't want a Zeppelin going down as a fireball.

We are using extra-large haggis sausage casings

made from cow intestines to put the science to the test.

Got some helium to try. OK.

It's not hydrogen, but I don't really want to risk hydrogen. OK.

So if you put it in...

What, just blow it up?

Yeah, absolutely.

Oh...

Oooh!

THEY LAUGH

Yeah. Yeah!

That's...

It's holding that gas!

Absolutely! That's all you need.

A special exploding bullet adopted by the British War Office in 1916

could at last puncture and set light to the hydrogen cells,

and by the following year,

77 of the 115 German Zeppelins had been shot down or disabled.

In the post-war era, airships made from a cotton-gelatine mix

would go on to offer commercial flights.

But it was the sausage skins of the Zeppelins that remain

one of the strangest stories of the First World War.

It's extraordinary, isn't it, that at this time,

when there's all this experimentation and invention

going on with chemical... new chemical substances,

huge push of technology... Yeah.

..the thing that turns out to work best...

Cows' intestines.

Cows' intestines.

Absolutely. It's so bizarre.

And all those poor people doing without their sausages.

You can't win a war without sausages! No, absolutely!

Quite right, Ruth.

I've been saying that all day!

An army marches on its stomach.

But I still haven't had a single sausage roll.

Don't mind me. I'm just looking at some sausage rolls.

Go on! Get out of here.

My two-metre rolls of freshly made puff pastry are on their way

to the sausage roll production line...

..where I'm meeting technical manager Breda Donaghey.

Hello, Breda. Hello! How are you? OK.

Yeah, good, thank you. Nice to meet you. You all right? Thank you.

How are you? Having a great day, thank you.

Now, what are we doing?

So what we want on our sausage roll line

is to have one continuous piece of pastry.

So what you can see Ostil doing here is joining the pastry together.

Ostil! You're making that look quite easy!

Got the wee knack to it! Yeah. There's always a knack, isn't there?

You gonna have a go?

Well, I can try! I can try.

If you don't mind it going wrong. No problem!

Ey up, I think I might be on here! Yeah, that's it.

Hold that that way. Yeah.

Ostil, I think I've got it, pal!

Good job! I think I've got it.

You've got a new job! Just try and make it a bit smaller next time!

Story of my life!

Get that like that. Roll this out... Yeah.

I think that were a case of beginner's luck.

And then your next...

Yeah?

Another?!

Go on, Ostil, carry on!

He saved me there! He saved me.

Cheers, Ostil. Thanks, pal.

The pastry is rolled again to smooth out the joins

and emerges as one long sheet...

..before it's fed into another machine called a decorator.

So what we're doing is, we're adding diagonal cuts

to the top of the pastry. That pattern...

Yeah. ..I've seen that on millions of sausage rolls over the years.

Why that shape?

So it is mainly for decorative features,

but it also does serve a purpose

where we cut into the pastry just by a couple of millimetres,

and then later on, whenever we bake the sausage rolls,

it helps give the pastry a nice, even lift.

So if I was to do that and I didn't put those lines on the top,

what'd happen to the sausage roll?

So, some of the sausage rolls, you would then get

a bit of an uneven bake,

so there'd be just a wee bit lumpy and... A wonky sausage.

Yeah. Yeah, we don't want that. No, we don't want that.

The pastry sheet is divided into six 10-centimetre-wide strips...

..and a docking machine pierces small holes for steam to escape,

so the sausage rolls won't burst open when they're in the oven.

And finally...

Ahhh. Now!

Now we're at the moment where it's starting to look

a little bit more like a sausage roll. That's right.

Here we go.

Oh, yes. The spiced pork has joined the production line.

Let the sausage see the roll!

if you're young or old

Three and a half hours into production.

The sausage meat is dropped onto the line,

squeezed along pipes at high pressure

and out of a depositor, straight onto the pastry.

What temperature is it when it's going in there now?

We want the sausage meat to be in around three to five degrees.

And why is that?

If it's too warm, the filling will spread... Right.

..across onto the pastry, which we don't want.

And if it's too cold, then it might struggle to come through our

depositing pipes here and cause gaps in the sausage meat.

So no-one wants a sausage roll with no sausage meat in it.

No, no, no! It's just a roll. Yeah.

So I can see it's going along there.

So what it's basically doing is it's taking

the sides of the pastry here and just joining them

together at the top to start forming what looks more like a sausage roll.

And then I've noticed it starts getting put onto its side.

So these are just wee guides. Yeah. OK?

So what it's doing now is just turning the sausage rolls

over onto their side.

As they roll, the edges are crimped together, sealing the meat inside.

I've never seen so much pastry in my life.

At least not in one day.

If you were to lay out all the dough,

you would end up in Athens.

That's how much dough that we process off this particular line

in one year. Hang on, so all the dough here would stretch from here

to Athens continuously? Yep. That's it.

Beautiful. Look at that.

As a northerner, just being at the side of these massive

long sausage rolls coming out,

I could stand here all day just looking at this.

I'd be quite happy.

Still not got to taste one yet, though. No. Oh, no.

Well, you wouldn't want that.

Our sausage rolls are still raw at this stage.

It doesn't matter to me. I'm from Bolton. Easy.

You'd eat a raw sausage roll? Oh, anything! Anything.

Obviously I'm joking. Always cook your meat, kids.

A guillotine creates 14cm long sausage rolls at a rate

of 240 a minute.

But I still can't get my mitts on one!

Why is it in a cage, this? Is it to stop me getting that out?

Yeah! Stop you poking your fingers in there!

No, it's for health and safety.

Because this here is what's known as our panning unit.

So we have 36 sausage rolls on a pan. Right.

OK, so there's 16 pans on a full rack.

Typically, every hour, we're producing 22 racks of product,

which is over 12,500 sausage rolls.

Terence Trent D'Arby! That is a lot of sausage rolls.

I mean, I say that - you can never have enough sausage rolls for me,

to be honest. So just...just these like this in a typical shift

during the day, you're well over 100,000, aren't you? Yeah.

And as well, Breda, I've noticed

a lovely little glaze on top of them here. Yeah.

So what we use is just a water and a wheat protein.

Oh, so like an egg wash? Yeah, an egg wash.

But because egg is an allergen for some people, we try and limit

the number of allergens that are in our sausage rolls.

These lucky sausage rolls need to rest for half an hour.

But nothing of the sort for me.

I'm heading straight to the ovens,

where there's a bit of a sausage roll traffic jam.

Right. Ready to go! Yep.

Ready to go in the oven, Paddy.

So the guys have already loaded five racks into the oven.

So this is our last rack. Shall I do the honours?

Of course you can. Rested sausage rolls, off for a tan!

That's it. Just push it right in.

Beautiful. Perfect.

Yeah. That's you. Go, Breda.

Close the door,

and that's us.

There they go.

Why are they rotating, Breda?

Sometimes the ovens can have hot spots and cold spots. Right.

So by rotating them around in the oven, we're just avoiding them

spots throughout the cooking process. Makes sense.

How long are they in there for?

So we bake the sausage rolls for 18 minutes at 230 degrees.

The first stage of the bake melts the margarine and turns the water

to steam, to create the rise for the flaky layers.

The second phase crisps the pastry and gives it a golden colour.

Oh, beautiful!

My stomach's rumbling already here.

How many is in the oven? How many does it hold?

So we have three six-rack ovens.

Each ovenload of our jumbo sausage rolls contains

just under 3,500 sausage rolls.

Leonard Nimoy! That's a big oven.

It is, yeah.

Right, shall we just loiter around here, Breda, until they're ready

and get them out? No.

No, we can't take them out on this side of the factory.

So what we're going to do, Paddy, is we're going to make our way up

and have a change of clothes, and we'll pick up the sausage rolls

in our high-risk area.

What are we putting on? We're going to put on nice red garments.

Love it! Very stylish.

Get changed.

My sausage rolls waltz around the oven.

And 18 minutes later...

..they emerge from the back door.

And the redcoats are ready to meet them.

Hi-de-hi, campers!

Ah, my little friends!

This is home from home for me now.

That's a sausage roll.

Golden on top... Yep. ..with the non-egg egg wash.

The smell of those delicious freshly baked sausage rolls. Yep.

The only thing I can't quite see is the 64 layers.

Well, I'll show you that now, Paddy.

Oh, look at these!

Beautiful!

Oh, let's have a look.

64 layers.

I can smell all the stuff from earlier, all the seasoning

and what have you. Yeah. You really get all that. Yep.

Oh, that's gorgeous!

Oh! I could spend the day here just sniffing sausage rolls.

I've got to be honest!

It'd be rude not to have a little, uh, bite while we're here.

Well, unfortunately, still no eating, Paddy, at this stage

in the factory.

Are you messing? No.

This is torture!

Freshly baked sausage roll! We can't eat that?

No, they have to chill.

I need... I'm the one who needs to chill having put that back!

Oh!

All day, all I've been thinking about is,

"I can't wait till they come out of that oven,"

and I still can't have one! But my moment will come.

It will come, yes. It will come. Right, let's get 'em in the chiller.

I'll go and have a little de-stress somewhere.

My warm sausage rolls head into the giant fridge for 60 minutes.

And talking of all things chilly...

Cherry's in her high-vis to investigate what happens

when we get rid of our broken fridges at home.

Each year in the UK alone, 3.5 million fridges are disposed of,

and almost 50,000 end up being fly-tipped.

That's enough to fill Wembley Stadium three times over.

But thankfully, over 2.5 million fridges come to places like this -

AO Recycling in Telford, one of the biggest fridge

recycling plants in Europe.

Dave Ware is commercial director.

Why is it important to recycle a fridge?

It's really important because they have really bad pollutants.

Within the compressor, which is... There. That's there, yeah.

So the compressor has refrigerant and oils in it.

It effectively has a motor. That's why it has the oils.

And what it is doing, it's compressing the refrigerant

and that creates the cooling effect.

It may be great at cooling, but if it leaks, the refrigerant gas

- tetrafluoroethane - can be many thousand times more polluting

than carbon dioxide.

So the recycling process starts by removing the chemical-packed

compressors, and that calls for a lethal bit of kit.

Wayne, are you ready? I am indeed.

OK. Right, let's rip a compressor out a fridge!

CRUNCHING

The sound of metal on metal is really violent.

Whoa, whoa!

High five!

The compressor cases are recycled, and the gases inside

go for high temperature incineration.

But that's just the beginning.

The rest of the fridge must be crushed.

And if you ask me, that's a job for a strong woman.

Her handler is operations manager Darren Baden-Smith.

Wow!

This is Bertha.

Is this the star of the show?

This is the star. There's no-one bigger here.

Oh, my God!

She's pretty noisy! She is.

She's a bit of an attention-seeking diva, if you ask me!

Standing three storeys tall, Bertha pulverises 700,000 fridges a year...

..into tiny pieces of metal and plastic

no bigger than three centimetres,

using heavy steel chains that rotate at 500 rpm.

That is extraordinary.

So you've got your metals and your plastics.

Yep. How do you separate them?

So just at the top here, we've got something called an ECS,

which is basically a barrel with magnets on, and it pulls out

the metal and then the plastic carries on through the process.

And across the yard,

they focus on recycling these leftover plastics.

In charge of processing 10,000 tonnes of it every year

is managing director Rob Sant.

That is one big pile of fridge plastic. Fridge plastic.

How many fridges are here? There's probably about 1,000

fridges' worth of plastic in this bunker.

And there's obviously a whole mix of different things in here.

More than 75% of these mixed plastics can be recycled.

The fridge door handles and glossy external parts are often made

from ABS - acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, which is one

of the plastics we want to save.

In this tank, we want to float off the good plastics.

How does that work?

What we do is we change the density of the liquid in this tank.

How do you change the density of liquid?

Well, you can add something like salt, for example.

It's almost like when you go to the seaside

and you float - easier in the sea.

So what we have here is an example of this.

And in front of you, we have some plastic beads.

So if you pour half into there,

you can see it all floats. They're floating. Yeah.

The plastics for recycling float to the surface and are collected.

And the heavier, non-recyclable stuff that they don't want

sinks to the bottom.

It all happens in less than 30 minutes.

So after all that work, we've taken this mixed fridge plastic

and we turn it into extractor fans.

Why are you making extractor fans?

So it's really, really important for sustainability.

We want long-life products.

We don't want the plastics to go into those single-use plastics.

You want something that's going to last ten, 15, 20 years.

Yes. Born from a fridge!

The perfect circular economy.

That is very cool.

Across the Irish Sea, our sausage rolls have cooled in a blast chiller

to five degrees Celsius.

And we're shifting them to the packing hall.

Stand back!

Fully chilled and relaxed sausage rolls coming through!

It doesn't really go in straight lines, does it?

HE LAUGHS

There we go. Yep.

That's us now. Now, Breda, the first thing I've noticed here -

12,500 you do in an hour...

Yep. ..but people are packing by hand. Yeah.

I thought it would be like a load of robotic arms.

So we like to pack the sausage rolls by hand so that we can visually

inspect each and every sausage roll that's sent out.

OK, I like that! Yeah. Personal touch.

The sausage rolls are enclosed inside the trays by a layer of film

from a 2km long roll.

That's enough to wrap 5,000 trays.

And each pack is then heat-sealed underneath.

Through there? Yeah. Through there.

Then we're onto our X-ray machine. Right.

So what are we checking for on the X-ray, Breda?

Yeah, we're just checking for any foreign bodies.

So bits of metal, plastic, anything at all that could have got in? Yeah.

Just one last check. OK.

And then they come down here? Yep, and they're heading for dispatch.

Dispatch. That's exactly where I'm heading as well.

Breda, thank you so much for looking after me. Yes, thank you, Paddy.

I've really enjoyed myself. Now, so it's not awkward,

you pretend you're doing something there, and I'll walk off that way.

Yeah, I will. In a bit!

While I'm off to get out of my Hi-de-Hi gear...

..my four packs of sausage rolls are put into boxes of eight...

..stacked onto pallets...

..and sent to dispatch.

In charge is operations manager Tony McFeeters.

You all right, Tony? Paddy! Pleased to meet you, pal.

I've got to say, this is the coldest dispatches I've ever been in!

It is, Paddy! We keep this about four degrees here, but...

Tasty in here, isn't it? That's how they keep it fresh.

And, as well, the lads have got to keep... No skiving! No skiving!

You'll freeze to death! You'll soon feel it. You'll know.

Got to keep moving, keep yourself warm. Yeah.

Is there a busiest time of year for sausage rolls? Yeah.

December is really busy, Paddy. Christmas!

Everyone having parties in houses. They want nibbles.

All over that.

How many sausage rolls are on there, Tony?

This lorry holds about 75,000 sausage rolls.

And how many lorries go out a day?

I would say about eight or nine lorries a day.

According to my dodgy maths,

that means this factory is sending out 675,000 sausage rolls

every single day.

Right, Tony, that looks to me like the last one on,

which means I can go and thaw out my little pippins.

Have a good 'un, pal. Cheers.

Six hours and 13 minutes after I took delivery

of the cuts of pork,

it's wheels up on our sausage rolls.

From the factory in Strabane,

they head out all over the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

And snacks from this bakery are shipped across the Irish Sea

to be enjoyed everywhere from picnics to school dinners

and footy matches.

Oh! The lovely, warm sunshine.

And I needed that. Who'd have thought

so much work goes into the humble sausage roll?

Which is now going to go into me.

AND they've warmed it up. It's been a long time coming.

SIGHS

Oh, yeah!

Well worth the wait!

Give me a cup of tea!

of happiness

wonderful place

human in the human race

no gold

been blessed