Original subtitles

Many years ago, before the bright lights and action of TV came along,

I used to work in a factory myself.

In fact, I'm in my home town of Bolton today,

visiting the very factory I worked at over 30 years ago.

The mighty Warbys,

or if you live outside of Bolton, Warburtons bread factory.

Yes, it's me, Paddy McGuinness,

taking the driving seat on Inside The Factory

and they've got me working right from the get-go.

Flour, flour!

That way, flour.

Thanks, flower.

I was 16 when I worked here

and my job was cleaning out the massive bread-making machines.

It were a Saturday job, in fact.

And it was graft!

But because it was a Saturday job,

the production lines were never working,

so I never actually saw any bread being made.

So, today, I'm putting that right.

Here we go.

Oh, my God, Rach!

That takes the breath away.

Absolutely, it does!

I'm back at Warbys...

I've cleaned them enough times. The ovens.

Were you on the ovens when you were here?

Yes, I have. Yes, yes. Spotless, might I add?

..catching up with old friends...

Here he is. Hello, boy.

Hiya. Hello, mate.

..and using my loaf...

Look at that little rascal.

I love it.

..to help make sliced white bread.

Meanwhile, my new bestie, Cherry Healey,

is discovering a tasty solution to bread waste.

In every pint, there's about a slice of surplus bread.

For one pint, one slice?

That's a very pleasant way to help Mother Nature, isn't it?

And our resident historian, Ruth Goodman,

is tracing the impact

of World War II on our beloved loaf.

In 1942, they banned white bread.

1.4 million loaves of bread are made at this factory every single week.

And I'm going to show you how they bake and slice every one of them.

Welcome to Inside The Factory.

This is bonkers.

Here we go.

Mirror.

Big moment.

First hairnet.

Here we go.

But at least I've still got...

..my dignity.

Looking good.

Happy with that.

Right...

Once more into the breach.

It's been 30 years since I set foot in this place.

I'm a little bit nervous. Big moment, this.

Honey, I'm home!

Wowzers!

Look at this!

I don't know what I was even worried about.

That's mad.

You see that conveyor belt up there?

I used to clean them.

Pretty much cleaned everything in here.

Being back's like saying hello to an old friend.

Just coming back in,

the smell of the place and the noise and everything else,

honestly, it's like it all comes flooding straight back to me.

They've been making bread on this site for over 100 years,

and it's a proper local landmark.

And I reckon there's not too many people from Bolton

who don't know someone who's worked here.

Look at these lads!

Get out there and get some work done!

They make all sorts of bread products here...

I think they're croissants!

..from sliced loaves and white rolls to wholemeal.

But I'm going to be following the production

of one of their biggest sellers,

the mighty 800g toastie loaf.

Where do I find that flour?

Oh, there it is.

Those graphics come in handy.

The tanker full of my main ingredient

is at the factory intake bay...

HE WHISTLES

..where Head of Flour Stuart Jones is signing in the delivery.

Stuart, how are you, pal?

Nice to meet you, buddy. Welcome back.

Got you a lot of flour. That's right. Yeah.

How much flour do you get delivered a day, Stuart?

So we'll have three of those loads a day.

So that's 90 tonnes of flour.

My word!

We can probably make about 170,000 loaves of bread

with that 90 tonnes of flour.

That's a lot of bread.

Silly question. Is flour just flour?

Is it a certain type of flour?

It's all top-quality white flour.

And it's made of wheat.

It comes from the UK and it comes from Canada.

Canada? Yeah. Why Canada?

So, what we're looking for is the qualities

that we want in the finished loaf. Yeah.

And that starts in the wheat itself.

And it's the protein that really matters.

That's what's important.

Gives strength to the bread. Yeah.

And then, when we actually get to butter the bread,

it gives all that nice strong bite.

My stomach's going already, here.

It's rumbling already.

Thanks to the warm summer climate,

Canadian wheat has a higher protein content than our British grain.

And after being refined at a mill in Yorkshire,

together, they create the perfect white flour for my loaf.

It's the way the miller actually mills it

which gives the quality to the end product as well. Right, OK.

And that actually removes the wheat germ and the bran.

And we're left with the endosperm which is the white flour.

Right. OK. And that's what we've got in there.

But that's not just it, because we need to fortify that.

Because we've removed that outside coat,

we need to put that back into the flour.

So what the miller does is adds that fortification back.

So we've got calcium, we've got iron,

we've got thiamine and we've got niacin.

And that's added back to the flour.

And all white flour in the UK has that fortification in it.

Let's get it pumped in, Stuart.

Come on, Alan!

Send her in, Al.

Righto, Paddy.

Here we go.

Bring on the clock.

As 30 tonnes of white flour are sucked out of the tanker,

my bread production begins.

It'll take 90 minutes to unload my delivery

into these massive silos.

Plenty of time.

I need a cup of tea now, after that little journey.

So I'm going to go and get a brew while you lot at home

find out what Ruth's up to.

With years of air raids, blackouts and food shortages...

..Britain had to endure untold hardship

during World War II.

There was almost no end to the sacrifices

that people had to make for the war effort.

Even white bread.

To find out how bread was the subject

of a national crisis on the home front,

I'm visiting the living museum in Sittingbourne, Kent...

Oh, lovely. Thank you.

..to meet scientist and processed food historian Dr Giles Yeo.

Here we go.

The quintessential pre-war sandwich.

Ham and cheese. My favourite! On white bread.

I mean, we have a hugely long tradition in Britain

of wanting white bread.

In the '30s, people were enjoying white bread

and they think it tastes nice,

this fluffy white bread that was all the rage at the time.

It was the fuel of busy working people.

It was really embedded within the culture.

That was what you expected bread to look like. Yes.

But it hadn't always been available to all.

In earlier centuries, white bread made from refined white flour

had been the preserve of the wealthy.

What was left from the milling process,

the outer husk and bran of the wheat grain,

was used to make cheap brown bread for the poor -

what we now know as wholemeal.

But by the early 20th century,

cheap wheat imports from America and Canada

and industrial milling meant that, finally,

white flour was widely available

and Britain's insatiable demand for white bread began.

Rolling up to the war,

we were importing nearly a quarter of a million tonnes of flour a year

from Canada, taking about 30 ships. Why Canada?

Because their wheat there happens to have more gluten,

more protein in it, which was... Strong wheat?

Yes, strong wheat, which was ideal for this fluffy white bread.

But with the outbreak of war,

the government faced food shortages,

and, from 1940, it began to ration foodstuffs

such as dairy, meat and eggs,

and the nation's precious white bread was also now at risk...

..with up to half the wheat needed to produce it under attack

from German submarines in the Atlantic Ocean.

The government decided to do the unthinkable.

In 1942, they banned white bread,

and the reason they did this is because

white flour has a 70% on average extraction rate,

which means that for every 100 kilos of grain,

you get 70 kilos of white flour.

And so the government introduced the concept of the national flour,

which is a type of wholemeal flour

which had an extraction rate of 85%.

It's sort of a halfway between fully wholemeal and fully white.

Yeah.

This higher extraction rate meant that more flour could be produced

from the same amount of precious North American wheat.

And there was another benefit.

Because this half wholemeal flour

had less of the bran and wheat germ removed,

it was more nutritious.

The resulting bread was dubbed the national loaf,

which we're going to try for ourselves.

OK. OK. You do it.

I don't bake. Don't you?

I know the science.

I'll leave the science to you. And I eat bread. And you eat bread.

Well, you know, it seems reasonable to me.

The national loaf had an unusual ingredient in the mix.

They added...

..chalk. Calcium carbonate. Calcium. Right.

And the reason they did it was

because people were having rickets with soft bones.

And just this little bit of calcium added to the flour - compulsory -

meant that it improved the bone health of the entire country.

This was a compulsory fortification of a foodstuff within the UK.

This is a good cooker.

Adding important minerals, known as fortification,

helped to reduce vitamin D deficiency

and diseases such as rickets.

But how does this wartime bread taste?

Here we go. One national loaf.

Fantastic.

So we should try this.

Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no.

We can't actually eat it fresh.

They only ate it day-old, so it was stale. Yes!

And the reason is so that you could slice it thinner.

So it went further. I have one from yesterday.

Here you go.

The national loaf had to be sold unwrapped, unsliced,

and the day after it was made.

How is that?

Well, that's tough. I'll give you that.

It is solid.

Public reaction was not at all favourable.

And the loaf acquired an unflattering nickname.

Hitler's secret weapon.

It's quite solid. It tastes like brown bread.

If I'd spent my entire life... Eating white bread.

..eating white bread, that's all soft and fluffy,

then the difference between the two would be quite marked.

Yeah, you're thinking, "What the hell is this?"

And it really, really annoyed people.

People don't like change, particularly in their food.

It was deeply, deeply unpopular.

Sliced white bread remained unavailable for a good few years

after the end of the war, and it wasn't until 1956

that the national loaf was quietly retired.

And what about fortification?

Did that just disappear with the national loaf?

It doesn't, because in the later '50s,

the government begins to mandate the fortification

of white flour with calcium

and with other things like iron as well.

So nobody has to worry about it any more.

Fortification legacy from the national loaf.

No shortage of white bread here.

They've been making it in Bolton ever since I can remember.

And when I worked here in the early '90s,

this banger was in the charts.

I've cleaned every inch of these conveyor belts.

That wouldn't have happened on my watch.

I'd have had that cleaned straight off.

And being back here is not the only thing that's unbelievable.

I've just clapped eyes on a familiar face.

Here he is.

Hello, boy.

Hiya, mate!

Where's your overalls, pal?

This is Pete.

This is the man who got me my job here over 30 years ago.

We went to school together.

Can you believe we're here talking on telly?

But I'll see you later.

Where will you be later?

Um, I don't know, but I'm sure we'll catch up with each other.

Right. All right, boy.

See you in a bit.

See you later, Paddy!

As much as I'd love to stop and chinwag,

I'm here to make bread.

My flour is travelling from the 60-tonne silo to the mixing area

where I'm meeting the factory's authority on all things dough -

Rachel Bacon.

Hello, Rachel. Hello, Paddy, are you all right?

Are you OK? How long ago have you started?

17 years, I've been with Warburtons.

17 years! What do you do here?

So I'm the Unbeatable Quality Manager.

What a job title!

No pressure.

No pressure at all.

So what are you going to show me now, then, Rach?

Well, that's what we're going to end up with.

So that's missing a key ingredient for me.

Butter and bacon.

You're absolutely right. Yeah.

And I'm going to explain to you

why it's so good to be able to butter it

and fold it round your bacon sandwich. Right.

You know how to turn my buttons. Oh, yes.

All right. Right. OK.

So, see this slice of loaf there?

Yeah.

There's 13,000 bubbles on that slice.

How do you know there's 13,000 bubbles in there?

Because I've counted them. You've counted? Yeah.

Not me personally.

We have a computer.

As much as I'd love to sit here counting each individual bubble,

I don't think it would make very riveting telly, that.

But... You're right. ..I want to see the dough being made.

Let's go. Go on. I'll follow you. Here we go.

It's how they capture all those bubbles

that's at the heart of this process.

Right. My flour is waiting for action

inside one of the 4.5m-tall mixers.

Up to the mixers.

This is where all the ingredients go in. Yeah.

So, between these two mixers, every hour, we make 9,600 loaves.

Just getting your head round that is bonkers.

Joining 185kg of flour, are 100 litres of water

and seven litres of a high salt water solution called brine.

And then we're going to put in the most important thing,

and that's the yeast.

Oh, my God, Rach!

That takes the breath away.

Absolutely, it does.

That's going to create gas and fill the bubbles.

I'm not surprised that stinky stuff produces gas,

seven litres of it goes into each batch.

And there's one more essential ingredient.

And then we've got some improver. Right.

It may not look a lot,

but within there, there's a mixture of complex ingredients

that are really important for the fine tuning

of the bread-making process.

The improver contains fat, vitamin C, and other ingredients

to complement the naturally occurring enzymes in the flour.

It'll strengthen the gluten structure in the dough,

helping to hold the bubbles.

They only add one kilo per batch,

but it makes the dough tough enough

to withstand the rigorous mixing process.

If you don't put an improver in it,

what would happen to a loaf as it comes out?

It would not look unbeatable.

It would look very... Below average.

Yeah, it'd look perhaps worse than that, actually.

OK.

As the mixer fires up,

two paddles spin at 1,924 revolutions a minute.

Combining the ingredients for three minutes at such a high speed

causes air bubbles to form and become trapped inside the dough.

Right. More cleaning chat.

I had to clean all the tops of them as well.

And conveyor belts.

£17 a shift...

..that's what I used to get.

But it is mad - all that time working here

and never once saw it working.

I know. Yeah.

Here we go.

So there's over 300 kilos of dough there.

Wow. Look at that!

And we're going to make 341 loaves out of that.

That is so satisfying seeing that come out of there.

During the mixing process,

the protein in the flour has combined with the water

to form gluten,

which creates the framework of our dough.

Next up, a machine divides the dough into 341 separate pieces,

each weighing precisely 920g.

Every one of these soft little mounds

will go on to make a loaf.

Ah, this is what I recognise.

So there's 80 dough balls coming through every minute.

Can I pick one up? Pick one up.

Straight off the line. Straight off the line.

All right.

Oh, I didn't realise it was going to be so...

Look at that little rascal!

I love it!

That loaf'll be the one... You know, when you're in the shop,

they have the wonky aisle -

that will be on the wonky bread, that.

So there's millions of bubbles in there.

So, we've got high-protein flour,

which gives us a really strong gluten network

that allows us to hold on to the bubbles

all the way through the process

and make sure that we end up with those 13,000 in every slice.

I've got to say, Rach, this is a bit of me, this.

I'm loving this little chat about bread,

just doing that.

It feels better in my hand, though.

It's not as sticky.

It feels great, doesn't it?

Oh, just put a bit of library music over this

and we'll just stand here.

SOFT JAZZ PLAYS

I am very easily pleased.

While I play with my dough ball,

the rest are sent to 400 revolving baskets,

which carry them through an intermediate prover

to relax for a blissful 2.5 minutes.

So it's like a little spa break.

You don't want to have a stressed piece of bread!

No.

This allows the sticky gluten strands created by the protein

to fully form around the thousands of bubbles trapped inside.

Love that.

My type of bread.

There's only one thing better than watching bread being made -

and that's eating it.

So now's the time I throw to the mighty Cherry Healey,

who's checking out one of my all-time favourites.

Oh, yeah. It's my favourite too, Paddy.

Every year in the UK, we munch our way through

an incredible 14 billion slices of toast.

So to find out how to make a toaster that can deliver the crunch,

I've come to the Dualit factory in Crawley, West Sussex.

I'm pretty sure that I'm in the right place

because even the air smells like toast.

I'm going to follow my nose.

Dualit was founded in 1945 by inventor Max Gort-Barten,

and it's still very much a family business.

I'm meeting Max's grandson, Alex.

Hi, Alex. Lovely to meet you. Likewise, Cherry.

He's going to show me around.

There are proper machines here, aren't there?

Yeah, absolutely.

I vividly remember when I was a kid

going into the factory with Dad on a Saturday morning,

and just the excitement of a nine or ten-year-old

coming in and seeing these massive machines

that punch holes out of metal.

Today, the team is making the classic four-slice toaster.

The first step is to make the body.

Formed from a single sheet of 0.5mm-thick stainless steel

by Brian Record, king of the power press.

As you can see there... Wow! ..four slots.

How much force is going down to cut those slots?

Well, this is a 20-tonne machine. Would you like to sit down?

I'll take the driving seat, Brian.

We slide it into the machine - right to the back.

Right there. Square it up. Yeah.

Orange button and then the green one.

Three, two, one.

Look at that. Well done.

What do you think? Now do another one.

Cor, crack the whip, Brian!

The next stage is to prepare the two ends of the toaster,

known as the castings.

We are handing over the gauntlet. OK.

Instead of paint, a chemically altered organic resin

called epoxy powder is used

to create a strong thermosetting coating.

Come down. Down.

Tell me when to stop. Stop. Stop!

The castings bake in an oven at 180 degrees Celsius

for ten minutes...

Ready to toast the toasters.

..where the epoxy powder melts and fuses together.

All right?

Oh, look at that, hey?!

Resulting in a tough uniform film once it's cooled.

All ready for hand assembly, where a single factory worker

will put together a kit of 168 parts.

Oh, wow, look at this.

Is this the world's hardest jigsaw?

Um, almost.

Helping me sort out the pieces is assembler Rob Lunn.

Rivet? Rivet in the hole. Rivet in the hole.

Pull that lever.

MACHINE HISSES

That's the cage done.

But the most important piece of this puzzle

is the heating element.

So, is this the bit that turns bread into toast?

Correct. This is made from mica, which is a naturally occurring

mineral that is mined mainly in India.

Underneath the mica, you can see the very fine wires. Yes.

And when we pass an electric current through the wire, it gets hot.

Why have this mica covering on?

Some people, and I would strongly recommend that nobody

ever does this, put a knife or a spoon down their toaster

when the bread gets stuck.

I would... You're looking guilty. ..I would never do that.

Right, where's this going? Right, that goes in the slot.

Of course, never put anything other than bread in your toaster, folks!

But coating the heating wires with mica may reduce the chance

of electric shocks, as it doesn't conduct electricity.

And it also withstands high temperatures.

Those wires can get up to between 500 and 600 degrees,

and that's where you get the perfect toast from - a fierce heat

that turns the sugars in the bread golden brown but leaves the centre

of the bread nice and soft and fluffy.

Ooh! Right.

Yep.

Once the five heating elements and timer are in place,

we're nearly there.

So that will go on the top.

DRILL WHIRS

168 parts and 21 screws later...

Done.

..my toaster is complete.

We always put our signature to it.

Oh, my God! It says, "Hand built in Great Britain by Cherry."

No way!

All ready to pop up that perfect slice of golden toast.

TOAST CRUNCHES Mm.

Oh, you've definitely buttered me up Cherry.

That looks good!

Wouldn't mind a slice of that right now.

Forgot to ask you - favourite topping on your toast?

Well, it's got to be butter first.

Yeah. And I do like a bit of marmalade.

Old school. Yeah. Love that! I'm a strawberry jam man.

But first, we've still got work to do.

One hour and 42 minutes since the start of production...

..our rested dough balls have undergone a change.

Grab a dough piece.

There she go... Oh, that's totally different.

Totally different, isn't it?

Not sticking to my hands, either. No, not sticking.

Why does that feel so different now?

So everything is relaxed.

Ah, here we go again.

The gluten strands in the dough that were stretched and formed

during mixing have loosened, making the bubbles less likely

to break down and any excess water is fully absorbed,

reducing the stickiness.

OK, so this piece of equipment is our moulder.

So this is like the cherry on the cake.

Yep. In terms of surviving the strength.

Basically, we're taking that dough ball,

we flatten it out... Yeah.

..and then we roll it back up again.

It's like a Swiss roll.

It comes through, coils up, and then it goes further down

the moulder, where we cut the dough piece into four pieces.

We then re-orientate it and make it so that they're sitting like that,

all next to each other.

This method is called cross panning, and it uses the bubbles

we've created to give the loaves extra strength.

Before the dough was split, the bubbles inside all travelled

in one direction.

Inside the machine, the cut dough pieces are rotated 90 degrees,

reorientating the bubbles at right angles to each other...

..to create a crisscross structure that's harder to break.

The four pieces are then squashed back together, forming one loaf.

So when you get your chips and you wrap the bread around it,

it doesn't break.

Wow. So much goes into it.

When you open it up at home, you just take it for granted.

As they exit the moulder, the newly formed dough balls

are ready to go into tins.

They travel along 30 metres of computer controlled conveyors...

..before being dropped onto a train track of loaf tins

which carries them away ten at a time.

And while my dough is filling the tins,

I've spotted an opportunity.

The bread we've had out there, a bit of a waste.

I'm going to knock myself a sandwich up and get my dinner.

That's a brilliant idea. I'll see you in a little bit.

Right, come on.

Here at Warby's, any left over bread is sent to food banks

or used as animal feed.

But away from this factory, Britain has a big problem with bread waste.

So Cherry's in search of a tasty solution.

Most of us are probably guilty of wasting bread.

Whether we overorder and let it go stale,

or chuck away the odd crust or two, it all adds up.

That means, as a nation, we throw away the equivalent

of one million loaves every day.

So, I've come to a brewery in Ashford, in Kent,

to meet Louisa Ziane, co-founder of Toast Brewing.

Since 2016, they've been using beer to help fight food waste.

This is where we are turning surplus bread into beer.

How much bread have you saved from going into landfill?

About four million slices.

Who is throwing away all this bread?!

It's incredible, isn't it?

Yeah, everything from bakeries, supermarkets,

the sandwich industry and our homes.

So about 44% of all the bread that's baked is never eaten.

So if I'm enjoying a pint of your beer, how much bread am I saving?

In every pint, there's about a slice of surplus bread.

One pint, one slice.

One pint, one slice.

That's a very pleasant way to help Mother Nature, isn't it? It is.

SHE CHUCKLES

The bread arrives pre-prepared from a factory that turns it

into dried crumb.

Each 15kg sack contains the equivalent of 600 slices.

Look at that. Fabulous!

It feels very, very dry.

It's crumbling in my hand.

Yeah, having the bread dried helps to preserve it.

And then, also, making it into much smaller pieces

means that we can get the sugars out of the bread,

which is what we need for brewing.

So, how do we start making beer with this bread?

We're going to take it over to the mash tun in the first stage

of the brewing process. Let's load her up!

We're adding 115 kilos of breadcrumbs to 5,000 litres

of water at 65 degrees Celsius.

Where's this bread come from today?

The batch that we're using today has come from a bakery.

Why has this bakery got so much spare bread?

So, the bakery is supplying supermarkets.

When the order comes through,

it's often very different to the forecast.

Oh! So the bakery is left with surplus bread.

Inside the mash tun, the breadcrumbs mix with the hot water.

To add fermentable sugar to most beers,

brewers use malted barley.

But here, they use a mix -

75% malt and 25% bread.

An enzyme in the barley called amylase helps to break down

the starch in the bread, releasing the sugars inside.

Any bread flavour should become subtle toasted notes

in a finished brew.

It's got a head like a beer.

It does look like a beer already, yeah. Wow.

How does it smell?

An actual dream.

It smells bready, malty, warm, delicious...

Using bread to make beer may seem odd, but it's believed

the Mesopotamians were doing it 5,000 years ago.

After 60 minutes, hop pellets made from the flour

of the common hop plant are added...

All right, let's add the hops.

..for floral, fruity and bitter flavours.

Then the liquid boils for an hour before being transferred

to a fermenter tank where, just like with all beers,

yeast is added, converting the sugars from the bread

and malted barley into alcohol and fizzy carbon dioxide.

It ferments for ten days, before being canned and sent to

shops and pubs across the country.

Luckily, Louisa has a pint waiting for me.

Well, I think that after all that work, it would be rude

not to have a little taste.

No, I think we deserve it. What do you think? Cheers! Cheers!

GLASSES CLINK

That is delicious.

Citrusy. Yeah. Very hoppy.

Yeah. And can you taste the bread?

Bread is not the first thing that comes to mind.

That's what you want, right? You don't want people to go, mm...

..sandwich.

SHE LAUGHS

How many slices of bread have we saved today

in that batch that we made?

About 6,600 slices in that batch today.

So, 6,600 slices have been upcycled and turned into something

that people enjoy and love.

Not bad. Cheers to that. Cheers. Well done, you. Thank you.

As tempting as that pint looks, I mustn't get sidetracked.

What happens when I pull that?

Need to get one of them for our house.

Amazing!

Go on, Chesney!

The memories of the '90s keep flooding back.

Just get me bearings here.

I'm sure I used to be in this bit here.

Hey up!

How are you? You all right. All right. Pleased to meet you.

Yeah.

Last time I was here, I was cleaning them conveyor belts up there.

Were you? Yeah, yeah.

You've done well for yourself anyway.

Oh, thank you very much. Very nice of you, that.

Thank you very much. You're a gentleman.

Now, where was I?

Oh, yeah, bread tins!

They're travelling ten at a time

from the moulders to the prover,

where I found someone else with a grand job title.

Manufacturing Excellence Manager, Joanna Whitehurst.

Hello, Joanna. Hi, Paddy. How are you? You OK?

I'm good, thank you.

In here, I've noticed it's a little bit warmer than the other section.

That will be the heat coming from the prover.

This giant prover is essentially a massive warm room,

kept at between 37 and 40 degrees Celsius -

the perfect temperature to activate the smelly

yeast inside the dough.

Tell you what, that's an impressive bit of kit, that.

We've got six sets of tins that are then pushed by an arm

onto what we call a shelf, and there are 160

shelves in our prover.

I love that - "in what we call a shelf."

I call them a shelf as well.

We all call them shelves!

Inside the prover, as the yeast is heated,

it begins to feed on the natural sugars within the dough.

A process called fermentation.

This releases carbon dioxide gas, causing the bubbles in the dough

to expand and the loaves to rise.

After 55 minutes, they're roughly four times the size

they were when they entered the prover.

So these are our final risen dough pieces.

They've really puffed up, haven't they? They have.

These bubbles are fascinating to me.

I never thought you'd think about bubbles in bread.

So these bubbles and filling them up is what gives us

the height of the product.

Once risen, they stick a lid on every tray to give the toastie

loaves their distinctive flat tops.

And two hours and 40 minutes into production,

they're finally heading into the oven...

Oh, this is the bit I'm looking forward to!

..with me and Joanna hot on their heels.

I've always wanted to say this to someone,

but I think I worked here before you were born.

33 years ago, I worked here.

33?! I was a good four-years-old at 33.

Oh, that makes me feel a little bit better!

Not as...not as decrepit.

Let's get down here. Come on!

Oh, that's put a spring back in my step.

It's been a fair while since I visited this side of the factory,

and until you see bread trays entering six at a time,

it's easy to forget just how big the ovens are.

So, 32 metres long, this oven -

around the size of three double decker buses.

My word, that's a lot of baking to get through.

It's a lot of baking. The products are in the oven

for about 21 minutes, and there are 3,400 loaves

in the oven at any one time.

Do you know when you talk about these ovens,

it feels like an old friend, because when I used to work here,

I know the inside and out of these things.

I've cleaned them enough times, the ovens.

You cleaned the ovens when you were here? Yes, I have, yes.

Yes. Spotless, might I add!

As the dough travels through the oven,

it's exposed to temperatures of up to 240 degrees Celsius,

causing the bubbles inside to expand even more.

Oh, come on, let's see this bread!

After 21 minutes, the lids are removed...

..and the loaves are turned out of their tins

and, finally, here come the fruits of our labour.

Oh, there they are!

Nicely tanned, golden brown.

Beautiful bread as far as the eye can see.

Look at these.

I don't think I've ever been happier, Joanna.

Can you smell it? Just warm, lovely fresh baked bread.

You'll never, ever beat that smell.

And this, seeing these come off and having eaten this stuff

all my life - that particular loaf -

it's great to see it finished off, like, coming out and golden.

Can I touch one? Are they hot or...?

They're very hot, but if you do want to touch one,

we do have some gloves behind you.

These? Yeah.

Bit much! Yeah, they are a bit much,

but you've got to keep your hands safe.

Right, OK, here they go.

Oh, look at that. Yes, I can...

Oh... What about that?

Look at that!

Beautiful golden and...

Oh, God, you're right, that is hot. It is.

I can feel that through the gloves. Yeah.

So the bread on the inside is around 95 degrees.

On the outside, 120, so it's scorching to touch.

Wow! Yeah.

Look at that. Oh, it's so - I can feel it's soft inside.

So soft. I can feel the bubbles.

160 loaves a minute are heading to a massive 23 metre long cooler,

containing up to 20,000 loaves at any one time.

Inside, the bread rotates for two hours, bringing down the temperature

from 90 to 25 degrees Celsius,

and setting the gluten - holding all those bubbles in place.

I know these have got to go to the animals,

but I don't think they'll mind if I find a bit of jam

and butter somewhere.

This loaf's a classic and I grew up on sliced white,

but I can be tempted by some other breads out there.

Like bagels!

And I've heard Ruth's partial to one, too,

the cheeky scamp!

I am. And here in London, I happen to know

they've got a fascinating history.

I'm in Brick Lane, Whitechapel, where those in the know

go for their bagels.

And they've been baking traditional bagels here for over 50 years -

selling them with fillings like smoked salmon and cream cheese,

or salt beef and mustard.

At Beigel Bake, they're available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Eli Cohen's family has run it since 1974.

Hello. Oh, hello!

I wanted to ask you about how you made bagels.

Come on, I'll show you how it works.

Ooh! So, as you can see, we usually have a team of four in the morning.

And there's all different processes.

It all starts from when we mix the dough.

The dough is similar to Paddy's white bread,

but with sugar added for sweetness.

A clever machine takes portions of dough and twists them

into a classic ring shape.

This is just the equivalent of rolling it out in your hands

and twisting it around.

Yeah, I mean, when we first started the business,

going back 50 years now, my father had to do it all by hand.

But the traditional secret behind a good bagel

has remained unchanged.

You boil them? Yeah, we boil them.

Yeah. I mean, that seems such a strange thing to do to bread.

It's only in the boiler for 15 to 20 seconds.

Boiling the bagel causes the starch on the outside to gelatinise,

creating a barrier from the inner dough, so when it's baked,

it forms a shiny crust.

Imagine being in a hot tub, you know, you sit there,

but you don't want to be in for too long!

It gives it a nice chewy texture, a nice shine

and creates a softness, as well.

The bagels are placed on wooden planks called shebas

and slid into an oven to bake at 290 degrees Celsius.

That helps create that golden texture... Golden texture?

..on the outside as well.

That is the thing that sets bagels apart. I think so, yeah.

You want to cook them on both sides, so the planks help

just to turn it a lot easier.

This is traditional.

The bagel is believed to have originated in the 13th century

with Jewish bakers in Eastern Europe,

in regions like modern day Poland.

This is the finished product.

It's got that golden texture to it.

And that shininess. It's that shininess.

But if you feel it, you can see it's still, it's still soft.

Yeah, and the hole I mean, they always have a hole in the middle.

Why?

It helps - it binds them. It doesn't go stodgy.

And also, it creates a bit more surface area.

So that it cooks quickly and evenly? Exactly, exactly.

Every time I've mentioned this I've said bagel,

but every time you say it, you say beigel.

Yeah, I say beigel, yes, and that derives from the Yiddish term -

"bey" which means ring.

Davina, is it beigel or is it bagel?

It's a beigel, darling! There you go. There... That's...

THEY LAUGH

I want to find out more about the bagel or beigel's origins.

This area of east London was once home to a thriving Jewish community.

So, I'm heading inside the nearby Sandy's Row Synagogue

to meet social historian Rachel Lichtenstein.

Hello, Rachel. Hi, Ruth!

Nice to meet you.

What a wonderful place.

It's wonderful, isn't it?

Originally built as a church for Protestant French Huguenots

fleeing persecution in Catholic France, it was consecrated

as a synagogue in 1870 by Jewish immigrants -

a community that grew in the following decades.

It wasn't until 1881 that you got these huge waves of Yiddish speaking

Jewish immigrants, fleeing persecution in Russia

and across Europe.

Over 100,000 settled here in London's East End,

near to the docks, near to their point of arrival.

So my grandparents were both Polish Jews,

escaping persecution between the wars.

When they first came, my grandmother was working in the schmutter trade,

the tailoring trade, and they married in 1932.

And soon after, they started a watchmaking business on Brick Lane.

By the time they arrived, the Jewish East End

was a really thriving, bustling place.

At its heart, Petticoat Lane was, as the name suggests,

the place to buy clothing.

And nearby Brick Lane offered a taste of home.

It was a place of lots of traditional Jewish food,

including bagels. Look at this!

And here's a really early picture,

and there you can see a lady with a basket

and she's also got some on a string there. String, yeah.

A little bit later in Brick Lane,

a famous bagel seller called... There, look!

..Esther and her daughter used to sell bagels on the opposite side

of the street, and the two of them would curse each other.

If...if you bought bagels from one and not the other,

they would curse each other in Yiddish.

But that's how they were sold.

It's popular street food -

cheap, easy to put in a pocket,

take with you for lunch... Yeah. ..or to school.

It was part of the everyday diet.

Rachel's grandparents, like many others, moved away from the area

after the Second World War,

and from the 1950s, Brick Lane welcomed a new,

largely Bangladeshi immigrant community, which brought with it

a cuisine that's become a real local favourite.

In fact, Rachel's family watchmaking shop is now a curry house.

And as for Beigel Bake...

Smoked salmon and cheese, please.

Oh, lovely. Thank you.

..it's still thriving, serving up to 3,000 traditional

beigels a day to a modern 24 hour crowd.

Mm!

This street really brings home how Britain has been a safe haven

for immigrants for centuries.

And delicious food like this, well,

that's just one of the many benefits.

SHE CHUCKLES

It's a long way from Brick Lane,

but here in Bolton, I'm reliving my own slice of history.

Oh!

And I must admit, I'm in me element!

You know, I don't think there's many things in life that aren't made

better when they're wrapped in bread.

You know what I mean? It's just a win-win.

9,600 loaves are exiting the cooler every hour,

trundling along to slicing.

So they're nice and cool now, Joanna.

Yeah, they're nice and cool,

and this is where we slice our bread.

So there's 16 serrated blades in the slicer. Yeah.

They move up and down very quickly

and that creates 17 slices - 13.7mm thick -

and that includes the crust.

I'm glad you said "crust", because some people call the end

of the bread the heel.

And those kind of people aren't to be trusted.

It's the crust, or, as it's known in our house, dad's piece.

Dad's piece. That's always the bit the kids go, "That's yours, Dad."

Kids don't like the crust, but dads love them.

And mums.

Lovely. SHE LAUGHS

180 loaves travel through the factory's six slicing machines

every minute.

And to keep those crusts fresh requires

a very particular packaging.

There it is. This is our wax paper wrapping machine.

Here, we actually wrap one product every two seconds.

I recognise that colour.

Look at that!

We're very, very proud of our wax wrap.

Made from a sheet of paper coated in wax,

it was first used to wrap this loaf in the 1970s.

I've got a bit of a sample if you want to have a look.

Let's have a look.

That's been the same since I can remember, and my mum

used to be a cleaner at bingo halls, and when I'd go with her,

she'd take me with her as a kid,

she used this same wax paper to wrap her sandwiches

up for her dinner and what have you.

Her and all the other ladies doing the cleaning,

but people literally used to use this stuff to keep other food fresh.

It brings back many a happy memory, that.

Can I keep this one? Of course you can.

Before I go, Joanna, I've got a very important question.

Right, OK. Bread - in the fridge or in the cupboard at home?

In the cupboard at home. 100%.

You can't keep bread in the fridge!

What is wrong with you people?

Right, lovely meeting you.

I'm sorry to end it on a sour note, but you're wrong.

You're wrong, Joanna. Bye, Paddy.

According to Joanna, keeping my loaf in the fridge

makes the bread go stale quicker.

But in the cupboard, the wax wrap keeps the freshness locked in.

Our wax jacketed loaves file into the packing machine

that sorts them ten to a tray.

I wonder if my mate Pete knows where they go next.

You all right, son?

Which way is the warehouse? Dispatch?

Just down here, mate. Show us, cocker. Shall we go?

As the loaves head to dispatch,

I've just got time for a catch up.

Look at all that what's going out every single day!

Every day.

How long were your dad here? He was here for years,

I don't know how many exactly.

It was over 30. With my Uncle Bernard.

Your uncle, your brother worked here. My brother worked here, John.

You got me on and, as you know, I hated that Saturday job.

Getting up, you. Yeah, because I just couldn't get out of bed.

So it was winter,

I'd walk here about 6:00 in the morning

and it were always raining.

I had a hole in my trainer and my sock used to hang like a dog's

tongue and then do my shift all day cleaning and then walk home.

You had to walk home. Oh! Yeah.

Oh... But I think at that age, it's kind of one of them -

character building, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's right.

But, uh, unfortunately, I've got to crack on now.

No problem, Paddy. But I'll see you after for a pint.

It was good to see you, yeah. All right, cocker. Nice to see you.

See you later, son. Bye.

That's what I love about this place,

whole families working here, going back generations.

And in dispatch, it's Driver Operations Manager, Lee Pendlebury,

who keeps this baked goods behemoth ticking over.

You all right, Lee?

Hello there, Paddy. How are you? Are you OK, you all right? I'm OK.

I've just been talking to my pal there because you've been

here a while, haven't you? I have, yes. '85, so...

So 80-... You were here when I were here. I was, yes.

How much is going on in that wagon there?

A wagon holds about 6,000 in total.

How many wagons a day? 44 wagons a day.

Fresh bread, 4am in the morning.

Yep. Every day. 44?!

We do about two million units a week here.

Wow.

It makes me kind of proud, really, to be, you know,

from the town that does this. Oh, yeah. Yes.

So you can help us if you want, but... I'm here for it.

Time to get the sleeves rolled up.

16 years of age last time I were in here,

and now we're back at the age of 32.

Yeah... HE CHUCKLES

Just put a filter on it.

It needs to be a good one!

And a bit more '90s pop.

Moving On Up by M People

I'm back. I am back!

HE GROANS

Ah...

Smells gorgeous on the back of there.

Yeah!

Am I all right? Am I doing a good job?

Yeah, you can start next week if you want.

There we go.

Right, cup of tea? Cup of tea, definitely.

Just 5.5 hours after I delivered the flour...

..6,000 loaves are leaving Warby's, heading into Bolton and beyond.

From this factory, 200,000 loaves are sent

across the north of England and Scotland each day.

And with five other sites making sliced white loaves,

they've got the whole of the UK covered when it comes to toast,

sandwiches and, of course, chip butties!

Well, what a lovely trip down memory lane that was.

And to finally come back here after all these years,

it's been an absolute pleasure.

And to see the care and passion that goes into making a simple loaf

of bread, well, that's been a real treat.

Speaking of treats...

Chip butty and a cup of tea, please.

There you are.

Oh! Lovely stuff.

Put it on my tab. You haven't got one. Whatever.