THE TECHNOLOGY OF BAKING

Bread has been baked for hundreds of years, and the same basic process is still used today. The main ingredients are flour, yeast, salt and water. The flowchart shows the processes used in an industrial bakery. If you baked bread at home, you would use similar principles but on a smaller scale!

Delivery and storage
Flour is delivered daily to the bakeries. The bakery also needs stores of salt (to add taste and aid proving), vinegar (a preservative), yeast (to make the bread rise) and vegetable fat (to make the loaf lighter and airier and extend its shelf life).

Mixing, dividing and first proving
The ingredients are mixed at high speed in under 5 minutes. The dough is removed and divided into individual pieces by machine. It passes along a conveyor belt and is left to 'prove' (when the yeast fills the dough with gas, causing it to rise).

Kneading and preparation
The dough is continuously kneaded for about two minutes, as it circles through a spiral-shaped machine. The kneaded dough passes along a conveyor belt until it is dropped into pre-greased tins.

Second proving
The tins pass along the conveyor belt into a warm area. Here the second proving stage takes place, lasting around 50 minutes.

Baking
The tins move slowly on a conveyor belt through a huge oven for about 20 minutes. Basic bread doughs are usually baked at 230°C (450°F, gas mark 8).

Depanning and cooling
The baked loaves come out of the oven into the cooling area. The bread is sucked out of the tins and left to cool for up to 1½ hours. Once cooled, it passes down the conveyor belt to be sliced (if needed) and bagged.

ICT is an important part of the process. Large bakeries use PLC (Programme Logic Controllers) to control a number of the steps during baking.

Bread labelling

By law, wrapped bread must be labelled with certain information such as:

• the name of the product and a description of the type of bread, e.g. white, brown, wholemeal
• a list of ingredients
• information on for how long it will stay fresh
• information on how to store the bread
• the weight of the loaf
• the name and address of the producer.

Nutritional content is not essential but, if it is included, it must follow a strict format. Some supermarkets and manufacturers also use voluntary 'traffic light' labelling on the front of their packets. The traffic light colours show whether the food has high, medium or low amounts of fat, saturated fat, sugars and salt per 100g. Red indicates high levels, amber medium and green low levels.

Source: Food Standards Agency

Bread types

There are three basic types of flour – white, brown and wholemeal – and bread made from it is usually described using the same terms. Bread is available in a whole range of shapes and sizes, crusty or soft crusted, wrapped or unwrapped, sliced or unsliced.

• White bread is made from flour that contains only the endosperm of the wheat grain (about 75% of the whole grain).
• Wholemeal bread is made from the whole of the wheat grain with nothing taken away. Wholewheat is another name for wholemeal.
• Brown bread is made from flour from which some bran and wheatgerm is removed (it uses about 85% of the whole grain).
• Soft grain bread is made from white flour with extra grains of softened rye and wheat to increase the fibre content by 30% compared with standard white bread.
• Sandwich loaves can be white or brown bread. They are baked in tins and have a flat top, giving even and rectangular slices.
• A cottage loaf has two round sections, one on top of the other. It is believed to date back to Roman times when it was invented to make the most of the height of the oven.
• There are a huge range of speciality breads available, originating from different cultures, e.g. pitta, naan, chapatti, ciabatta, bagels, soda bread and baguettes.

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