Ear on Chicago; Unidentified

That is the sound of a huge sifting machine at the tip top bakery at 57th at La Salle Street on Chicago Southside. Today we are doing the story of bread and this is the first step in the making of a loaf of bread. Our guide is going to be the manager, Mr. Ray Murray. Now Mr. Murray, I'd like to step over here a little ways so we can get away from the sound of the sifting machine and perhaps you and I could talk a little bit better. Now around us we see huge stacks of sacks and I assume that these paper sacks contain flour. The flour apparently is being duffed in this big hopper. Now suppose we started at the beginning. First of all, where does the flour come from? While the flour is shipped in here by freight cars from different states, the purchasing department of our company decides what flour is will be purchased and they are shipped in from all the states, almost all the states in the union. Now they arrive at trackside up right up here to our right don't they? Yes. Now this is an interesting

operation over here. A hundred pound sacks of flour coming down a chute from the railroad siding and there is about a 45 degree drop and then about a 45 degree incline going up. The boys standing there waiting as the sacks come flying down the chute they go up the upgrade and back onto this little dolly car I guess. Now what happens after the boys stack that up? Well that skid is placed in the storage room as you can see. There is probably about 14 or 15 carloads of flour on hand here in this area. And is that flour arrives at this place in a designated spot and it will be issued out according to the age of it, the time it arrives. Now over here to our left Mr. Murray we can walk a little bit closer I think. There is a man here dumping a sack of flour into this large hopper.

Would you explain that operation to us? Now what he is doing there is he is dumping two different brands of flour, ones of spring flour and ones of Kansas flour and they are going into a blending machine. That blends these two types of flour together. From the blending machine it goes into a roll ball sifter. You can see that sifter there it is about 8 feet by 4 feet and it is moving in a round shaking motion. That sifts through the screens that are in there and from there it goes into a large storage tank which is a pneumatic flour system. May I go back just a minute you were mentioning that you mix spring wheat with the northwest wheat, something like that, what do you do that? Why don't you just use one kind of flour? Well our production department has proven through many

years of experience that one flour complements the other and by doing that they improve the tip top quality and flavor. You might use spring wheat mixed with wheat from say all Minnesota. Spring wheat is from the northwestern states, the Kansas wheat is mixed with the spring wheat. All right now we've got the flour into that hopper and down through the blender and into the sifter. The sifter is sifting it down into a big chute, what happens to it then? From there it is blown into a large storage tank. That's on the floor above or what? Yes that's on the floor above and then you'll find that when we get up on the fifth floor that is drawn numerically to the mixers. And that's our next step? Yes, why don't we go up there? Let's go up there now. Well Mr. Murray we've come up to the mixing department now and in front

of us are some huge machines that apparently are the mixers. Two are the right, our large containers containing dough. Now I may be using the wrong terms here so we better get back to Mr. Murray. Is this the mixing machine? Yes that is a mixer. All we're doing now is starting off by making what we call a sponge. So the housewife would probably refer to it as a batter. This is as the mixing of flour, water and yeast. And then this mix is put in these large doughed troves and it's allowed to stay here in these troves for about three and a half hours. When I'm Mr. Murray you say you mix the flour in here but how do you get the right measure of flour? How do you get the right measure of flour is compared to the amount of yeast you're going to use? Well I'd like to have you meet our production superintendent and he can explain that to you probably better than I can. Mr. Hill this is Mr. Julius Sauer our production superintendent. All right Julius suppose we walk over here towards

this mixer we can get a better look at it and I can tell a little bit more about it. High up above the big mixing machine is what I would call a hopper but the term used here at the bakery is a scale. Now the reason you call it a scale I suppose is it weighs the flour is that right Julius? That's right that gives us the correct amount that we had to require to the formula. That's an awfully big scale. Yes it is it holds thousand pounds of flour. Now where is the scale itself? I mean where is the indicators to how much is right here alongside of the mixer? Oh yes here it is I see. And that's that that your amount of the requires and it shuts off automatically it's all automatically controlled. In other words you could only get a thousand pounds in that hopper up there. A thousand pounds that's a capacity to that hopper. Julius where does the yeast come in? What yeast comes in through from the refrigerator we keep that in the refrigerator and the main that mixes the sponges or the dolls what we call he brings it in here the amount that he requires

then he scales the amount for each individual patch that's his responsibility. Now Julius you have a mixer in this mixture over here what's your ratio there your yeast compared to your flour? Well that's usually to 700 pounds or 500 pounds of flour the ratio would be around 12 to 13 pounds of yeast. Is that about two percent? Yes it runs an average between two and a half to three percent. All right now we've got the flour in the scale and coming down through the hopper again and into the mixer and the yeast goes in. Now what happens inside of there? We can't see inside of it but something is going on. Well there's bars across that mixer it runs 72 revolution per minutes and the average mixing time for a dough like that would be between three and a half to five minutes. I think there's one thing we forgot is there is there also water mixture? Yes there's a water meter right over there that also works similar to the flour scale and that's set the same bay and it's bumped right into the mixer. How much water? Well water 270 pounds right now at the

present time. Measure your water in pounds. That's right. So you mix 270 pounds of water about 500 pounds of flour. That's correct. And about 20 pounds of yeast. That's correct. All right now as the mixer turns it mixes up this all these ingredients. Now he's going to open it up this is a good time for us. That's right that's ready now ready to come out. It's fully developed now. Another word you notice now that's all in one great ball. Now that temperature is very important to that particular thing as he takes an out and puts it in this dough throw what we call here. It's for men's now for the next three and a half hours before it's remixed into the dough again. That was an amazing operation. We stood here and as Julius described it the large mixer opened up its gaping jaws and out came what they call a large sponge and I suppose that that's probably a good term. Into the tray it went. It's a large container which holds the mixture but now Julius there's one question I want to ask you as it came out of this mixer it was a lot smaller than it is in this trope

for example over here. Why is that? Well that's your yeast action in this sponge I mean as it rises that's fermentation time what we call that's required to make a loaf of bread. As it raises now you see the size that it just came out it will probably go four times as big as the original size. How long would it take for to reach that size? Well that's between three and a half to four and a half hours. All depends what type of product you make out of. The process then known as fermentation is as the dough setting here in the trope. That's correct. All right Julius thank you very much for telling us about this particular operation. Mr. Murray what happens now? Well this sponge it goes into a stainless steel chute into the next floor where there are a bank of mixers. What about the other ingredients Mr. Murray where do you add those? They're right here on this floor let's walk over here and see right in this next room over here. All right we're walking only a few feet away from the mixers and into another room where they mix the other ingredients

right down here to the left of us is another scale it looks like another big hopper and down underneath here there's an interesting sound Mr. Murray and I wanted to pick that up. What is that down there? Well that's a mixture that's sponge and the other ingredients added that are now being mixed together and they will be a dough when they get out of that mixer. What about first of all before we go into that mixing downstairs we better talk about the other ingredients that you mentioned a moment ago. First of all what are these? Well there's milk and sugar and shortening. The yeast has already been added in the sponge so the major ingredients here are milk and sugar and shortening and you'll notice that they are put up in individual aluminum containers they that is all done by one man he's a specialist in that apartment we do that to avoid the danger

of human failure. Is each ingredient measured in a scale just like the flour and yeast? It's all sifted and in scale. Where is that done in another room? Yes right down here at the end of this fifth floor. That's a similar operation to the one we've just seen I suppose. Yes a little smaller scale. All right now the ingredients that are brought into this particular room in here. Now here I saw a man pick up a pale full of something rather and move it off shortening and moved it off over there to one of the scales. What is he doing? That's going down into the mixer below and the fourth floor that's going down with the sponge that was sent down from the other room. Well then so we can get this they will join together in that mixer down. That's what I was going to get at. The sponge now the ingredients are mixed and they all go down into another mixer. Yes. That's where we should go next. Yes. Well Mr. Murray if you don't mind I think we'll go back to Julius for this operation now that we've come

down here to the fourth floor. Now here is a large mixer in front of us Julius similar to the one that we saw upstairs mixing the yeast and the flour. Now what's going on inside of this mixer? Well this is the final stage of the dough now. Now you have everything together that makes the complete dough. It's in the mixer where it's automatically controlled in the mixing time until the mixer is fully developed and the fact that it's got about a half a minute more to mix and there's also water jack it's through that mixer to keep it at a certain temperature. This is the timing mechanism right here. That's correct. You say you have about 30 seconds to go. That's correct. In fact it stopped right now. Well the mixing machine is just as you can probably hear it's just shut down and now the door is opening and again we can see the sponge. You still call it a sponge? A dough that's a complete dough now that's a complete tipped out dough in looks about the same but you change the name. It's right the fully ingredients in there now. Out it comes out of the large mixing machine and that's really a man -sized mix master isn't it? That's correct.

And into the tray again now what happens now it's going to stay in the tray for a while. That's going to stay in the tray for 20 minutes now. That's a fully complete dough there now with all the ingredients in there. That's a mighty good smell isn't it? That's right. Now I want to ask Mr. Murray about this particular room a little while ago you and I were talking about keeping it at a constant temperature at a constant humidity. How is that done and why is it done? Well it's done through controls it's a nerve -conditioning system you might say. The constant temperature and humidity in this room never varies regardless of the outside temperature. All the windows are double sealed windows and that's done because temperature and humidity and time are tremendously important in the development of a flavorful loaf of bread. Julius we've seen one mixer and we saw one upstairs but we haven't mentioned how many mixers you have there's a whole

bank of them right here. One two three are there what four of them? There's five of them in this floor. Each door a raisin bread or protein dough or white dough we manage to mix different doors and various mixers. Give us some idea of the size of the operation you may not be able to answer this question but I'll ask it anyway. How did this mixer here came a large hunk of dough and went into the chose we saw. How many lows of bread will that make? That gives 900 lows to the large and 1200 during the small. In other words what you just seen there there was 1 ,300 pounds of dough in there and we'll make how many lows of bread. Well it depends what size. Love your one but and a one pound law of it will run 1100 lows. I see I see and you have five of these machines in operation all day long. That's correct. All right Julius. I might add that it's there an operation all night long. We make most of our bread during the night while people are sleeping so that they

get fresh bread the next day at their grocers. Mr. Murray there's one thing we didn't add while we were upstairs I noticed a large pack not large packages but a lot of packages of raisins. What happens to those raisins when you make a raisin bread? Well they're taking out of those cardboard boxes that they arrive in and they're sent through our raisin washing machine. This machine washes the raisins and takes out any foreign matter such as the stems from the vines and sometimes gets in the raisins. I believe Mr. Sauer mentioned to you that there's also a magnet on the end of that machine that would pick up any foreign matter. We don't have very much up it's just another precaution that we take. Mr. Murray we have the dough mixed and into the chosen 20 minutes from now it'll be sent somewhere else where where will that be? That'll go down another stainless steel chute to the second floor for the bread

if it's a roll dough to make rolls hamburger rolls and so on. It won't go to the next floor the third floor where we have a divider down there and make up machines and ovens. Are both operations similar? Yes the machinery is a little different in size. While we're following the operation in a loaf of bread the production of a loaf of bread but so what do you say we go down to the second floor? Fine let's go down. We've come down to the second floor now. When we left two floors above Julius we left the dough coming down the chute and into the hopper and this is the hopper as we get down to the second floor and we finally picked up our dough again. In this machine we can see that the dough is being cut up little round balls. How does that operate in there? That's what we call a divider here. It scales the individual piece any size required.

You notice there's six loads coming out at one time. From that point on she goes into a round of where she's formed into a round ball. Then it goes on to an overhead proofer for the next 10 minutes and from that point on it travels into the molding machine. Let's go back and take it just a little bit more slowly. First of all as it comes out of this dividing machine it is a little hunk of dough that it goes into the rounder as you mentioned. Is that similar to the wife when she used to round the bread with her hand? That's correct that's exactly like hand round it and there's a little flour mixed with it in there. Just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking against the rounder. Alright out of the rounder it comes and let's walk over here so we can see it. It goes on to a little conveyor belt here and down into this machine. What do you call that machine there? It's a dry proofer. Another one is reviving the dough from the time that it's scaled off until it enters into the molding machine again. So this each individual ball of dough is going to be a loaf of bread. Is that correct?

Now in this machine here it comes out of the conveyor belt and goes into those trays and how long does it stay in that big machine there? It takes ten minutes before it comes down into the molding machine. Why ten minutes? Just to revive the dough for better sheeting, for better loads of bread, for better texture. Alright now we've got it out of there and onto these conveyor belts and it goes over there and I think we better go over there and pick up Mr. Murray and have him tell us about that machine over there. Well we've got the dough onto the conveyor belt and now it's coming over into these into the rolling machine here and Mr. Murray this is a very amazing machine. I've been standing here and watching it for a minute or two and as the dough comes out it's in that same ball shaped form as we saw just a few moments ago and when it finishes with the rolling machine it's out flat. I guess this is just like the way housewives roll bread if they still make bread and using their rolling pin isn't it?

That's exactly the purpose of this machine. This machine is a series of rolling pins and as you can see it's done at high speed and these glows are coming through those rollers at 65 a minute. I'm going to say that a housewife with a rolling pin would take her a long time to roll just one loaf of bread. Yes it would. Longer than it takes you to roll 65. Yes. Longer than it takes us to roll twice that many. All right now we've got it sort of flattened out and here's an operation which I want to describe as well as possible but it's a strange sort of mechanism. The flat dough comes rolling down the conveyor belt and underneath it's sort of an iron carpet. It picks up one edge of the dough and rolls it into a roll and then on down into a pan. What do you call this particular operation Mr. Murray? Well that's shaping it. That's a mesh

chain and a canvas belt and the mesh chain is causing the bread to roll like you would roll a jelly roll. That improves the texture. This is machine is what we say what we call cross grainy. It improves the texture. You get a real smooth fine texture in our tiptoe white bread because of this process. To the housewives who still break still make their own bread would you suggest that they roll it instead of making it into a loaf? Personally I suggest that they buy it. I knew you'd answer that way. All right down the roll of bread comes and finally gets down here where it's going to be placed in the pan and eventually going to be baked. Now it's an interesting sound I think as the roll of dough bounces into the pan. So let's pick that up. You may have been able to hear each

individual loaf of bread prop into the bread into the pan. Now Mr. Murray we've got it into the pan and a way it goes again onto another conveyor belt. What happens to it? Well it goes over into the automatic steam proofer and I feel come over here I'll show it to you. We're going to walk about 15 or 20 feet away over here whether the pans of dough is moving and as Mr. Murray told you over to the proofer. I think we can get over here Mr. Murray with the length of cord that we have. Now behind you here is where the pans start up automatically until the steam proofer. The proof box runs about 150 feet above this traveling oven. Now you'll notice here the size of the loaves as it begins its trip through the steam proofer and here they are when they come out. About twice the size or more. Yes. Now this finally gets to the point where we finally see a loaf of bread. This looks

like a loaf of bread. Yes, now it is shaped into a loaf of bread. It has one more change. It will spring and be a little higher when it gets into the oven. The heat will cause it to spring. Is the oven the next step then? Yes. Now what you see here is this arm pushing 16 loads of bread into the oven at the same time. This is a traveling oven. The loaf starts here and when it comes out the other end 110 feet away it is a finished loaf of bread. Well let's go down there and take a look at that then. Yes and perhaps you'd like to see the progress of the loaf through the windows in the oven. Yes, wait a week and move for a rather quickly perhaps and take a look at it and then go down and see the finished loaf. That sound you're hearing is a rush of air into the hands

containing the baked loaves of bread. Mr. Murray, we finally reached the stage where we've got the loaves of bread baked but we haven't mentioned how they were baked and so on. As you and I came down that long corridor we could look in and see the breads actually being baked and from one stage to another you could see it getting browner and browner until it finally got here. Let me ask you about that oven. That's a mighty long oven. Yes, that's 110 feet long and it's what we call a traveling oven. We start the bread at one end and it comes out finished at the other. You'll notice that man over there is the control. He is controlling the heat and different sections of the oven. That's all thermostatically controlled. You'll notice too or you cannot see it but in those ovens we have an agitator that blows the heat around in the oven so that each loaf is perfectly baked. There's no cold spots or no hot spots. It's equal in there. You have different temperatures for different stages in the baking? Yes, that depends

entirely upon what the baker dictates. All right now we've reached this particular end of it and the pans of bread come out here and the bread is virtually blown out of the pan, isn't it? Well that's an automatic deep pan. That device tips the pans in a position where the loaf will fall out. Now you see that and here that jet stream of air being blown out there that's to help release that bread from the pan. There you hear it again the rush of air as the air comes out of the jet stream and under the pan. Listen. Now the loads of bread are dumped down here. What happens to them then? Well as you see they're on that stainless steel shelf and then they slide into a series of shelves. Now that's a cooler. They leave here and they go onto this cooler which goes along the ceiling of the first floor

for maybe 170 feet. And they're cooled? Yes. And then what happens? And then they're slicing wrap. That's where we go Nick? Yes. Well that sound is that of a slicing machine and it's a rather amazing mechanism indeed Mr. Murray. We saw the bread coming down the shoot after it went through the cooler that you mentioned just a moment ago. Went on a turntable over there and finally arrived into this what do you call it a cutter or slicer? We call it a slicing machine. I like to have you meet Bill Dunham and the assistant manager here and he can explain it to you. Bill tell us about this machine. This machine is a band type slicer which is a series of band blades. The loaf is sliced and at the rate of 60 per minute. It seems like that's about the rate of speed in the entire

operation you put out a lot of loads of bread that way. That's right the slicing speed has to be in coordination with the cooling and baking operation. I suppose you have to be careful Bill that you get every slice is about equal. The blades are automatically adjusted. One adjustment takes care of the thickness of each slice. Okay Bill now we've got the loads which have been sliced sliced coming out of this slicer and onto a little tray here and they're being pushed along. Now what happens next? This tray is an automatic feed into the wrapper. The bread is wrapped at the again the same speed as the slicing 60 per minute and automatically feeds from there onto a conveyor belt which feeds it into either our shipping operation or our transport operation. Okay Bill thanks a million for talking to us and thank you Julia. Mr. Murray we want to thank you very much for

showing us your operation here at Tip Top Bakery. Certainly it has been a great pleasure for us indeed. It's a pleasure to have you. I wish you could take to your audience the nice aroma that you have here. Yes that's the only thing we can't get across on this microphone is the aroma and it has been wonderful. Thank you sir.