PAT-A-CAKE, PAT-A-CAKE, BAKER-MAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 268, 11 August 1944, Page 20

PAT-A-CAKE, PAT-A-CAKE, BAKER-MAN

HAT was the old story when the flour-to-the-elbows baker mixed his dough, kneaded it, set it to rise, knocked it down, set it to rise, cut it with a long, sharp knife, and shuffled it into roundness, patted it into smoothness ready for the wood-fired oven. But there’s not much patting done in the big modern bakeries these nights: electricity, cast iron, and the endless belt has robbed the baker’s hands of their old work. The penny roll, the penny bun, are patted still; but not the 2lb. loaf, your daily bread, You buy it fresh in the shop across the street in time for morning teaperhaps it’s slightly warm still. Twelve hours ago it was dry flour, water in the pipe, salt in the bin, compressed yeast in the container, and a few other things (including that nutty flavour) waiting to be called in. ‘AT the bakery the doughman is first to arrive, six hours before the rest of the men. (On Fridays he comes at 11.30 a.m:, on other days about 5 p.m.)

He sets a six-hour (or slow) dough ready for the first batch of bread-it will go into the ovens about midnight. The doughman will go home after midnight when he has prepared the last batch of dough, a quick dough which takes as little as two or three hours to rise. When the dough is proofed or risen and knocked down it sets out on its mechanical journey to the oven: through automatic dividers (to parcel the dough for a 2lb. loaf into its right size and weight) into series of iron moulds, over endless belts and under automatic knives, the softly bumpy stream of white dough flows and curves into the baking tins to be proofed again and then wheeled on huge trolleys to the oven door-and there evea the oven comes out automatically to meet it. A wheel is turned, and sizzling, crackling into the warm air of the bakehouse comes the black-hot inside floor of the oven-an iron table on wheels. The pans of bread are lodded, the draw-plate is wheeled back, the door is shut, and the browningoff process begins. In an hour or so the whole bakehouse is filled with the disturbing smell of crisp-crusted, ovenhot bread-a whole army of shining loaves drawn up ready for embarkation

orders-and, in the background, the smell of the yeast and the raw dough. By x % WENT round a big Auckland bakery with the manager and round a small one with the owner. The small bakery makes everything from buns to block cake, but not plain bread; the big one makes all kinds of bread, rolls and buns, but not cakes. The big bakery has a dozen or so ovens automatically fired with coal or oil, the heat being controlled by thermostat; the small bakery has the one oven, man-fed with four-inch manuka logs, a few of which are put into the cooling oven to bake dry for quick kindling the next day. The oven in the small bakery is the same size as the ones in the big bakery; the difference is that the thermostat-controlled ovens in the big bakery will bake batch after batch of bread at the same temperature all through the night, but the oven in the small bakery gradually loses heat, cooking down the scale from pastry to shortbread and block cake. The mixing bowl (perhaps I should call it the mixing well) in the small bakery mixes 100Ib. of flour, beats up 260 eggs at a time; (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page)

in the big bakery it mixes three-quarters of a ton of dough at a time-but no one ever feeds it eggs. The cunning and timesaving and hand-saving devices in the big bakery (for instance, the automatic cutter which divides a certain weight of dough into the required 36 equal pieces to make three dozen penny buns so even in size that not even a schoolboy could complain that one is bigger than another) are repeated, sometimes on a smaller scale, in the small bakery. But this is not so everywhere. An Old-Fashioned Trade "The baking trade is a very old-fash-ioned trade,’ the small baker told me. "In some bakéhouses they’re still making bread and cakes exactly the same way their great-grandfathers made _ them. You'll find that in many cases the business is handed down from father to son and is run by a whole family. Each member is a skilled tradesman and can do any branch of the work, but they don’t introduce many new inventions or devices to save time or handling." I. looked at his long tables and benches, the wood a golden cream colour from long years of use and long years of scrubbing, and I imagined the line of father, grandfather, great-grandfather working at them since Auckland began. The old man at this bench now was working shortbread dough. I watched. Flip and flap. And then the new device; it could have been a clothes wringer; the dough came through it (thick, thin, very thin, according to the setting) and then slid down a tray to the long wooden

bench to be cut into strips. That wringer was certainly a time-saving device. The alternative is the rolling-pin, domestically known as the husband beater. The old man, the owner told me, was an expert; he had retired but had

cume back to work for the duration of the war because of the shortage of bakers. I thought I was handy at pikelets myself; but now I know just about where I stand. Here was a man turning out perfectly browned, perfectly rounded pikelets at the steady rate of 60 dozen an hour. Perhaps it was the bag he piped them through that made him so speedy, perhaps he wouldn’t be so quick if he used my kitchen spoon, perhaps it was the great expanse of hotplate he had to work on, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps... . a %« % "Y OU'VE got to move with the times," the manager said as he began showing me through the big bakery. "Now I can remember the time when I used to be sent up to the brewery for a gallon of yeast; and then we used to make our own yeast, slow-acting stuff it was too. Nowadays, for a rush job, you can have a batch of bread out two or three hours after you start. In the old days you had to ‘leave the dough nine hours in the troughs while it proofed." "Do all bakers call troughs trows?" I asked. "Trows, trow, yes; rhymes’ with dough," he said, and explained that this was the despatch room. There was a fleet of delivery vans drawn up against a long wall of cubicles from which the drivers would take their quotas in the morning. (continued on next page)

PAT-A-CAKE, PAT-A-CAKE

(continued from previous page) Everywhere on the other side of the cubicles there were huge trows or troughs in which the bread was wheeled from the ovens. We inspected the coal houses, the automatic firing boxes which gradually feed coal to the fires as the thermostat gives them their orders, the special Vienna bread oven, and the fearsome ovens with the floors-on-wheels-looking as if they should belong in torture chambers in the Middle Ages. Career Cat From the dark doorway of one of the coal houses there strolled a black cat, tail in air, white front gleaming. She reminded me of something. ‘Do you ever see any mice?" I asked the manager. His face sagged. "God forbid!" he said. "Can’t you have a bit of tact?" asked the black cat. "Can’t you see the whole idea of Mouse is a nightmare to him? What d’you suppose I’m here for? I can tell you I have the most responsible job in the place. They sift the flour with automatic brushes and electric sieves, they polish all the metal, they keep everything hotsy-totsy-clean, they do all that Man can do, but you know what Mouse is-and I’m the only person in the place to deal with that vermin." "And what hours do you work?" I asked. (The manager was-staring at his feet in a trance). "Hours?" she said. "Hours? Khah!" (which is the only way my typewriter can deal with her cynical laughter). Her white whiskers rose in astonishment as she yawned. "You don’t imagine I’m a unionite, do you? Lamsy divey, I work the clock round. Then I always work the overtime with the chaps on Friday nights and Saturdays as well." "And do you get many?" I asked quietly, not to wake the manager from his trance. "I do and I don’t," she said. "Sometimes I get along all right, other times I have to swipe a 3d coupon from the boss here. Well, I can’t stand yattering here all night wasting my time; anything else you want to know?" "M’m, well," t floundered, "you like the work?" "Like it?" he said. "Khah! It’s my career, isn’t it? What's more, I’m the only female employed in this bakehouse." I could have known she was a career cat when she gave me that responsibility stuff in the moeinating. ‘ The manager ec cksiis that of all the men who were working here not many were skilled bakers; some of them were classed’ as labourers and they would never become expert tradesmen, "If a boy wants to learn the trade he has to go to a small place where they make bread and small goods so that he can go right through every branch, I’m a baker, I can take the doughman’s a here, or make the buns or rolls, I’ve done cake-making (at home as well as in a bakery) and wedding-cake decorating in my time. That's the right way to learn a trade-start at the beginning and go through every branch." I was home by midnight. Most of the men working in that bakery would go home with the milk next morning early.

J.

(continued on next page)

FOR several weeks past, Southern listeners have. been entertained by groups from the Otago University, broadcasting over Station 4ZB. These sessions have included performances by the Musical Society, the Corn Club, and the Dramatic Society. On a recent Monday the University Orchestral Society presented a programme of light classical numbers by their string ensemble. The concluding presentation-in this series, to be broadcast on Monday, August 14, features a variety programme.