How bread is made

The Chorleywood process of 1961 swapped long rising for intense mechanical mixing.

stations: 7
things upstream: 28
raw sources: 11
steps from the ground: 9

The short version

Flour, water, yeast and salt are mixed until gluten forms a stretchy network. The dough is divided, shaped, proofed so yeast gas inflates it, and baked in a tunnel oven. In the Chorleywood process, intense mechanical mixing cuts the fermentation time. The crust browns through the Maillard reaction.

Weigh the ingredients

Silos feed flour into a scale and water is metered in. Salt, yeast, fat and additives go in by weight, since weighing is more accurate than measuring by volume.

Goes in
Flour Water Baker's yeast Table salt
Mix and develop the gluten

Large mixers beat the dough until the gluten proteins link into a stretchy network that can trap gas. The Chorleywood process, developed in 1961, uses intense mechanical working to dramatically cut the fermentation period and the time to make a loaf.
Divide and round

A divider chops the dough into pieces of equal weight, one for each loaf. Rounders roll each piece into a ball and let it rest.
Mold the loaf

Each rested piece is sheeted flat, rolled up and dropped into a baking tin. The tin holds the loaf's shape as it rises.
Proof in a warm cabinet

Tins ride through a warm, humid cabinet while yeast feeds on sugars and gives off carbon dioxide. Gas bubbles swell the dough until it is about as tall as the finished loaf.
Bake in a tunnel oven

The tins travel slowly through a long oven. The heat sets the crumb, drives off water and browns the crust, which gets its flavor from the Maillard reaction between sugars and amino acids at the hot surface.
Cool, slice and bag

Loaves are removed from the tins and cooled until the center is firm enough to slice. Blades cut the loaf, and a machine bags and seals it.

End of the lineBread Next it goes into fish sticks.

Worth repeating

Starch residue on pounding stones from about 30,000 years ago hints that people were making bread-like foods that long ago.
An early leavened bread was baked as early as 6000 BC in southern Mesopotamia.
Bakers write recipes as percentages of the flour weight, with flour fixed at 100%.