How do commercial bread makers like Sara Lee and Pepperidge Farm get their loaves to turn out in a uniform size and shape every time?

Question

How do commercial bread makers like Sara Lee and Pepperidge Farm get their loaves to turn out in a uniform size and shape every time?

In: 265

Answer 1

Worked in a factory bakery for a summer in high school. The others described uniformity, so let me describe the machines.

First you get a huge bowl on wheels, drive it to the flour silo and type in the amount of flour you want. After that you measure by hand the smaller amount of ingredients (salt, yeast, water…).
You drive the bowl to a big ass kitchen aid looking thing and mix them all up. When it’s properly mixed you drive it to a lift, which lifts the bowl and dumps the dough into a hopper. Dough is then sliced into 1kg (or however big your loaf is) chunks as it slowly comes out of the bottom of the hopper.
This dough chunk then goes to automatic rollers, which first make it a round ball and then roll it into a loaf and drop it into floured buckets the size of finished loaf. These buckets then go through a long conveyor belt in regulated atmosphere (humidity and temperaure right for yeast) so the dough rises. When it’s finished rising it goes straight in the oven in those same buckets and comes out perfectly baked.