Bread baking weekend

December 4, 13–15, 2007

My ideas about bread production went no further than my favourite picture in the classic Soviet cookery book, “The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food”. It depicted loaves going down a spiral slide from some place up above to somewhere down below.

My ideas were in need of an update.

Production in Moscow

Unbelievable but true: bread is made from dough.

The recipe is dead simple.

The dough divides itself into suitably sized chunks, goes down the slide, kneads itself and does all of its own proofing.

The most interesting part happens before the loaves go off to the oven — they’re scored in a series of lateral strokes. Turns out that it isn’t nurturing hands that do this, it is in fact a knife tied to a rotating bicycle chain.

Piping hot loaves slowly ride out of the oven. The conveyer belt awaits — it’s narrow and fast, like the streets of Monte Carlo. Some racing cars fly off the track.

The loaves go from the conveyor belt straight onto the spiral, which takes them down one floor. This is the most captivating stage, second only to the scoring.

One floor down the bread is cooled deliberately. In other words, it would seem that the bread is depleted of its most desirable quality. A special spiral shelf spins slowly, unhurriedly, for half an hour in a cool room to ensure that the loaves forget all about that oven.

At the end of the road loaves fit to become exhibits in a cabinet of curiosities — two-headed, armless and legless, microcephalic and megacephalic — are set aside. They will all be crossed with other returns and turned into porridge — shredded into tiny pieces and added to the next batch. It turns out that the recipe explicitly calls for this.

Production in Podolsk

There’s an oven here dating all the way back to 1958. That’s also roughly when they last washed the floors.

A special machine chops the dough into loaf shapes.

Then the process is repeated more or less as described above. By the way, they sprinkle coriander on top of Borodinsky bread by hand.

They also make white bread. Just a regular day: the conveyer belt has come to a standstill, but the strip stretching out of the oven is still serving up loaves. The workers have sprung up to clear up the congestion.

It goes without saying that there are also high-tech production lines here.

Bread deliveries go out to stores throughout the entire day.

The lorry driver made a sign out of bread labels.

Sliced bread and loaves

They don’t much like drivers at the factory because they try to steal a tray or two to resell any chance they get. As a consequence, they’re not allowed into the areas where the bread has not yet been cleared for dispatching.

Attention
Drivers strictly prohibited from entering
You could lose your bonus

Production in Ryazan

Practically everything is as it is in Moscow. The only thing is that they also have a production line where they make imprints in the bread using special spikes instead of human fingers.

They’re got effective methods for upholding quality standards.

Line no. 2
Quality production
Faulty production
Over-proofed
Insufficient volume, rip around the crust
Bread packers!
If you put the faulty bread in with the good bread you won’t get paid!

Bonus track: Russian interface

Buckwheat production.

Flour production.

At the elevator.

A Russian interface — intricate settings of parameters no one knows anything about.