New Zealand Industries.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 4, 27 July 1910, Page 33

New Zealand Industries.

No. 111.

Bread-Making by Machinery) —A Visit to a

Modern Bakery.

ZZV UCH a common thing it is, this “daily bread” of ours—seen in J every home in the land. Yet where does it come from? How do we get it? Through what processes does it pass before it conies upon our tables, the finished article? How much does the average man or woman know of the modem art of breadmaking, ami the many processes by which the golden grain, harvested in the summer is converted into the familiar loaves delivered at our doors each day? With these questions uppermost in his mind the writer paid a visit to Mr W. Buchanan’s up-to-date bakery at -Helen I errace, Auckland. The establishment contains the finest and most modern bread-work-ing plant in New Zealand, in fact there are only two others like it in Australasia. So far as the Auckland building is concerned, care has been taken to avoid all unnecessary handling. The top floor is used as a store for flour, ami is provided with the necessary lifting apparatus for elevating stocks as they arrive. In addition to the large supplies of flour always on hand —sometimes run ning into as many as 20,000 sacks —the sifting and blending is all done from this floor. The sifting machinery does its work in a very thorough manner. Al! that the attendant has to do is to feed the machine with flour and to see that the supply of water and yeast which fillers through automatically is maintained. Seven sacks of Hour were dis posed of in as many minutes, the floui in passing through, receiving a thorough sifting, all foreign substances being rejected. So thoroughly is the work done that not even a particle of dirt enters the kneading machine below, which is automatically fed by the sifter and blender. On the second floor is the kneading machine, in appearance something like a huge churn. The interior of the machine appears to be a mass of blades of about the thickness of a plough-share. Churned into dough the flour advances and recedes like the waves of a miniature ocean, one minute threatening to overflow the sides

of the machine, the next being swallowed up within its depths. There is no question that the dough will be well kneaded

when it leaves the machine, which it does in about twenty minutes. The dough troughs come next. The second floor seems to be full of them.

They are all on wheels and are quickly moved into position. A man wheels one of the troughs up to the kneader, turns a lever, thus placing the machine on its -ide, and then begins emptying the dough. The trough is half filled, wheeled away and covered with a cloth. In a few hours when it is ready for use. it will have risen, by the working of the yeast, to such an extent as to till the trough. On the second floor, too. yeast making is carried out in the most cleanly manner possible, at a uniform temperature, and with all tubs. vats, tables, strainers, etc., carefully sterilised by steam. The processes, so far described, provide work for the day time. After the dough is made it has to be left for some hours to allow the yeast to leaven thoroughly.

It is then available for breadmaking purposes. Separate machinery is brought into action at this stage, and each night tin* scene is a bnsv one. In the dough-

room. tin* kneading machine is. for the lime being, silent, but the dough which has passed through it during tin* day is in evidence everywhere. Trough after trough is wheeled up to the hopper, through which the dough is dumped down a -hoot to the divider and moulding machines on the ground floor below . Here every thing is life, bustle, and animation. We look at the divider lir-t. It is passing tin* dough through at the rate of sixty loaves a minute, each of exactly the same size and weight and exactly alike, for the machine is mo-t delicately adjusted ami is as true as the ingenuity of man can make it. As the dough comes down the shoot, it falls into pockets. th“ size of which is regulat ed by levers, the weight of the bread.

of course, being determined by the size of the pocket. The pockets open auto matically and deposit the dough on a revolving band, by which it is carried, -till on revolving band- to the moulding machine. The moulder i< another very line pic. < of machinery which does pr.i-lv.dh eventhing in the shape »f moulding the bread, having adjust inents whidi • n able it to turn out even <le-ci i pi i< >i of loaf. Entering the moulder, t lie l»r<:i I is carried on a canvas band along a cylinder, which du-t- it with flower in the -line fashion th it a k would dust scones or cake-. d h-'ti *. after moulding, it is carried out on 1 » tin* table-, w here it i- dropped into ; lit tin- by men who are waiting to rccciv ‘ it. Movable tables, working on a light tranivvav running round the building, past the oven- and out into the loading shed, are used to cOllvev the bread to the ovens, which arc. perhap-. the mo-; notable feature of the c-t a bli-.li ment . Ihe ovens in which the bread is baked are a marvel of ingenuity in con-trm-tioii. Each has a capacity of 2S(I loave-. Hid a net wink of steam pipci- line the bottom, -ide- ami top of cadi oven, giv ing a temperature of from 175 degrees up to 525 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat is regulated by a system of dampers, which may be -o worked that it becomes next to impossible to burn the bread. Mr. Buchanan li;i- «-ix of t he-e ovens installed with two fires to each, tin* -i\ being capable of baking lU.(MM) loave- in eigh4 hour-. Tin* lire- are only -ix inches deep, and are kept level all o\ r. They neee—itate verv little work, as when attended to at the beginning of the evening, they only require replenishing twice during the night. When ’hi* batch of loaves is ready for the oven, the boit t om of lh<‘ oven i- drawn out to its full length, the ti iv re-ting- on two legs fitted with wheels. which move along a short tramway. The tins con taining tin* bread, or the loave- them-

selves, are placed in position, the front of the oven is raised, and the tray is wheeled back with the bread, the oven being then closed down. A dummy clock in front of the oven marks the time at which the bread is thus

put in, and tin* baker knows by referring to the dial that within a given <time the batch will be ready for removal. Where the dough i<s placed on the trays without the tins, tin* bread is finely sprayed with a mixture, the principal ingredi-

ents of which are hot water and sugar, and this gives tin* fancy broad the gloss which so greatly improves its appearance. To see the broad emerging from the ovens, one cannot do better than visit the bakery early on a Saturday morning, as the writer did. 'flic final batches of bread were in readiness for baking on our arrival, and oven after oven was being opened to release the bread, some 8,000 loaves being required for the day’s supply. Everything went with the regularity of clock-work, the ovens being rapidly emptied. I lie bread baked in tins (280 loaves in a batch) was removed to the tables on the tramway in something like 00 seconds. Under the old system of handling every tin separately, it would have taken a smart baker at least 20 minutes and probably half an hour to empty the same* oven. In this instance two num. holding a long iron rod between them, place the rod at the back of two rows of tins, and shift them on to the moving table with one sweep; the table when full is promptly wheeled out of the way into the loading up shed, emptied on to the carters’ tables, and left there to cool oil*, the movable table returning to the bakery. It is all very simple*, yet very wonderful, when one conics to think of the cumbrous methods of handling bread obtaining elsewhere.

him an appearance of the comet to foretell his decease. We have our own ideas as to what became of the most aged of men, ideas which often comforted us in our youth, when age and goodness were imposed upon us as synonymous terms.

In the fifth chapter of Genesis, it is stated that Methusaleh lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred and eightytwo years. Later on we learn that Lamech was a hundred and eighty years old when he begat Noah; and in the sixth

chapter we are told that Noah was six hundred years old when the Flood came. How can we possibly escape from the conclusion that Noah, for reasons into which we do not presume to pry, left his ancient relative outside when he entered into the ark, and that Methusaleh met with death by drowning?