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| Globe Stores and Horstead Bakery, 1982 |
We were planning to buy our flour from a local mill, but when I placed my first order their chemist, who was also a test baker, came to see me to ask why I had ordered a particular grade of flour - not their best! I explained where I had been trained, and, though they were big customers of the mill, he told me he wouldn't cross the road for their bread - lent me a commercial bakery book, and advised me which recipes and which grade of flour to use.
Initially I tried to get local workmen to convert our premises, which had been a hairdresser's, into a bakery, but after getting a ridiculously high quote from one, and the second turning the job down (laying a floor, constructing a couple of workbenches and installing two sinks) as it "was too big for me", I decided to have a go myself! I decided to get the floor laid professionally, and asked the electricity board to lay on the 3-phase supply we needed - though they asked that we make the access hole through the wall for them, which I did, although I discovered that the wall was brick and flint (traditional Norfolk construction) so it took me ages and bruised knuckles to hammer my way through!
The sinks and workbenches I built myself, though I had no prior woodworking experience, apart from a term at school some 10 years previously! We added an electric water heater, which the electricity company installed for free as part of the 3-phase installation - in fact their work cost us nothing at all!
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| Twin sinks with water heater over - cooling rack to the rear |
While this was going on I was also looking into what equipment we would need - and as this was before the days of internet and cellphones this consisted of using a baking industry magazine and looking through the adverts and calling companies asking for catalogues and so on! We heard about a local (50 miles away) bakery who also bought up old equipment, so arranged to go there, and bought some of our baking tins, a small mixer, a "pie" machine (with a heated die for things like mince pies), and some other sundries. Our mixer we bought secondhand from an advertiser and they delivered and installed it - buying new was way beyond our budget - but we did opt for a new electric deck oven and proving cabinet, and later on, when we were producing 90 dozen bread rolls by hand, also bought a roll moulder!
At this stage we had no idea how much bread we needed to produce, just that we had to cover the lost revenue from cancelling our order of factory produced bread, which was not that much in a village store. Similarly we didn't have much clue what our capacity was - I mean we knew how much bread the oven would take, but didn't really know how much we physically could produce!
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| All our bread was sold through the grocery shop - here is my sister wrapping a large white loaf |
The premises we owned was a former semi-detached house, and we lived at the rear, with the two shop fronts, which had been extended some way outwards, being the old front of the house. We knew we would need some form of extraction over the ovens, and realised that the old fireplace had been bricked over, so once the ovens were installed (so I knew the exact location and dimensions) I knocked through into the old chimney and found a company who fabricated a stainless canopy, to my specifications including a condensation drip catcher, which we hung over the oven and connected to the chimney!
Interestingly the biggest "problem" we encountered was the oven installation. The company had warned us it was very heavy and suggested we buy four metal plates to go under the casters to spread the weight, especially as we had a wooden floor! These needed to be 12" square, and 1/4" thick (30cm x 30cm x 6mm), so we had them made and they were sitting next to the oven location before delivery. Unfortunately the electricity company, who were supposed to be there on the day to assist with the connection to the supply couldn't make it - or rather the oven arrived late in the day and we could not get the electrician to come at such short notice, so he could only come the following day. This meant that the installers couldn't connect the oven up, but also after they left we noticed they had moved the metal plates aside and NOT installed the oven on top of them! So for the next hour and a half my parents and I huffed and puffed, and levered and cursed, and finally managed to get the four plates under the casters.
The following day the electrician arrived and started by calling the oven company to ask about the wiring - again as this was before mobile phones it was quite a tricky process, as they explained to him where everything went, he rushed through to have a look at the wiring layout, and then went back to the phone for more clarification! Eventually he started connecting the 3-phase thick cabling to the oven and switched the main switch on ... and it tripped out! He switched it on again and again it tripped out! He checked his connections and tried again, and each time it tripped out! He called the oven company back and they again explained where everything went (the installers should have left a wiring diagram!), and after much to-ing and fro-ing the electrician realised that the oven was wired back to front! Live and earth had been transposed! A quick change over and we had a functioning oven! We had been told we had to "burn in" the oven before use, but had not been warned how bad it would smell, and how that would linger for days!
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| Tom Chandley 3-deck oven, with old, but reliable 100 quart mixer behind |
Once the smell has dispersed and everything was in place we did a few test runs, starting with simple bread rolls, which we gave away as samples in the grocery shop - and they received amazing feedback from everyone! We had intended to create a sales area at the front of the bakery, but soon realised this was impractical, so used the large window as a display area where customers could see our bread all laid out cooling on the cooling rack I had constructed, but all the bread was carried through to the shop for sale.
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| Test baking rolls, oven canopy visible |
While the construction work was in progress we had a visit from Norfolk's Food Safety inspector - we had to register as a food producer and this triggered a visit. It was early days so was a good opportunity to find out what was required as well as whether our plans would comply. The inspector was a young man, who later became the County's chief officer, and was very helpful. He made some suggestions which we willingly complied with, but also listened to our explanations why we were doing things a particular way. For example we were using wooden slats on our cooling racks, and he suggested we might want to varnish them as it offered better hygiene protection - I asked him how the varnish might react to hot bread coming out of an oven at 300 degrees being placed on it, and he agreed immediately that this was impractical, and as long as we maintained the wooden slats clean he would have no issue with this. We had also glued a formica laminate to our main 3 metre workbench, but had constructed a wooden one metre square "top" to work the dough on. He wasn't very happy with this - stainless steel was becoming the norm in food establishments, though formica was acceptable (but was subject to scratches which could harbour germs if not treated carefully - though he agreed that in a family business it was unlikely to receive rough treatment!), but wood was considered a "dangerous" surface. This was something I had talked over with my "trainers" and the chemist from the mill, so explained that stainless steel and formica were "cold" surfaces, while wood was neutral, and as temperature was crucial in the bread-making process, and the texture of wood assisted the manipulation of dough, it was the best surface for optimal bread production. We showed him our cleaning regimen on the wood surface, and he again acquiesced and accepted our procedure - he noted this in our file and over the years we never had any problems with inspections.
Everything was now in place and we just had to set a date to start production. We had worked out how much bread we had to produce to replace the factory bread sales, but were unprepared for how successful it was! The first week we sold 4 times our "usual" bread sales, and it kept growing from there! My Dad never quite grasped the concept of moulding dough, so he was our chief "mixer" and "cutter" - weighing the pieces for Mum and me to process. We approached the whole process with military precision - not having any family background in this it was all very new and we soon realised we had to put a system in place - so we sat down and worked out all our timings. How long the mixing process took, then how long that dough had to ferment (different breads had different bulk fermentation times), how long it took to process, how long to prove, then how long to bake. As the main bench was not only where we moulded the dough, but also where we emptied the oven, we had to make sure there were no clashes - that the bench was clear when a batch came out of the oven - so we had a timetable for when everything happened. There were very few gaps in this - we worked like a well-oiled machine - load oven then process the next dough, at the same time get the mixer on with the next product. Finish processing the dough on the table, empty the oven, and give it a few minutes to recover (might also entail changing the temperature setting) before loading the next batch, and then start processing the next batch. We had "training clocks" on each deck of the oven showing the time the bread was ready, and pieces of paper on top of every fermentation bin showing "knock back" time, and when that dough was ready for the next step!
Monday through Thursday the timing didn't change, but Friday was busier so we had a couple of extra batches at the end - and Saturday ... well, Saturday was crazy, we started 3 hours earlier and finished an hour later to fulfill all our orders. Christmas we struggled to meet demand, so baked strictly to order - no walk-in sales - and had to close off the order list when capacity was met, and eventually had to do the same for the 23rd December - we were baking solidly, without a decent break for 11 hours in the bakery, and then putting in some more hours later (after a nap!) in the shop! It was hard, hot, work, but incredibly rewarding, not so much financially, but just satisfying to be producing such a good product that people really appreciated, and working together as a family!
When we started I was the one who got up first - at 4.00am most mornings getting the mixes going and the dough into the fermentation bins - with Mum and Dad joining me some 2 hours later when the table work started, but later on we started producing some confectionery lines (like almond slices, macaroons, fruit pies, etc.) and I would work on those while Dad was preparing the doughs - this meant that I was baking off cake lines while the ovens were not needed for bread (and using lower temperatures) so we were using our time (and our cheap rate overnight electricity tariff!) more efficiently. The great thing with all our confectionery lines was that they could sit and wait for oven availability as were not subject to over-fermentation!
Everything we produced met with universal praise - something I put down to the fact that we worked with such precision - all the recipes were carefully calculated and strictly followed, and everything was planned and executed, no corners being cut, and no cheap ingredients. We even bought the highest grade flour the mill produced, using Canadian high protein wheat, and eventually became their "test bakery" as they knew we followed recipes and instructions. Their chemist/test baker would produce a new flour and test it under laboratory conditions, but when they wanted a "field trial" would come to us - the newest bakers in the area! Their sales Rep used to visit once a month - to collect the cheque mainly (some bakeries were slow posting cheques so his visits used to stimulate them into action, but with us it was a formality as the cheque was either waiting, or, if his visit was late, had already been posted!) - and he always commented that ours was the best bread he saw each month, even though other bakers were using the same flour, and sometimes the same recipes. He would always buy a Wholemeal loaf, and tell us that even their chemist, John, could not get the quality we got!
When we first started we (Mum and I) used to make the rolls by hand - Dad would cut 4oz (roughly 100g) pieces of dough, and we would split them in two and round them up. One "batch" was 360 rolls (6 trays of 60, which was the oven capacity), so on a Saturday we had to make 3 of these, spread among the other bread types - 1080 rolls rounded by hand between us! This soon became far too time-consuming and tiring, so we invested in an automatic roll divider/moulder, which made our lives a lot easier (and could also be used for Hot Cross Buns at Easter!).
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| Roll divider/moulder alongside proving cabinet, with slatted cooling rack in foreground |
As we got better at things we managed without Mum three days a week, with just Dad and I managing to cope easily, freeing Mum for the grocery shop and more free time, but she was back with us for the busier days from Thursday onwards (Thursday we used the same schedule as the first three days, but the batches were much bigger so we needed the extra help).
John, the mill chemist, also showed me how to make fancy bread like wheatsheaves and "loaves and fishes", so we used to produce these at Harvest Festival time for our local churches, and for display in our window.
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| Loaves and fishes |
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| Wheatsheaf |
Unfortunately all good things come to an end, and when Mum and Dad decided to retire we realised it was financially impossible for my sister and I to continue the business - we needed to replace two workers, and would probably have had to employ three or four to cover the hours Mum and Dad worked, and as my parents also needed to withdraw capital to buy a house to retire to, it was decided to sell the business as a successful going concern. As part of the deal I agreed to stay on for 6 months to help with the transition, and to train the new owner in all the procedures, and my Dad (who was an accountant by profession) offered to continue to do the accounts for free, though this was turned down.
***To be continued***
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