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A fine little film, and you don't really need to be able to speak French

JeremyCherfas's picture
JeremyCherfas

A fine little film, and you don't really need to be able to speak French

Hello again.

Quite by accident, I happened to stumble across this film from Belgium, made in 1956. I enjoyed it, and maybe you will too.

Jeremy

Comments

breadforfun's picture
breadforfun

Loved the automatic roll shaper!

Brad

lumos's picture
lumos

Fascinating!  Never seen an automatic roll shaper before. Wonder a modern machine's mechanism is similar to that...? Loved the folding of the dough, too. They look like folded duvets or pillows.

Thanks for finding such a little treasure and sharing with us. :)  

 It was fascinating enough without any commentary but still, I wish my French were good enough to understand what they're talking.

lumos

 

 

JeremyCherfas's picture
JeremyCherfas

Most of the talk is about quantities, times, that sort of thing. There's a bit at the end when, if I heard correctly, they say that the time from start to finish was four hours, which seems pretty brief. And I think I remember that the batch of flour in the mixer at the beginning was 225 kilos. The best bit, to my ear, was at the end, when the reporter gets in the pit and tries his hand with the peel, and the boss says "Cherchez le pain," meaning look for the bread. I think he is deliberately punning on Cherchez la femme. But I could be wrong ...

Jeremy 

lumos's picture
lumos

wow, thanks!  To confess, I was watching it without the sound on, thinking I wouldn't understand anyway because, after not using the language at all for more than 20 yrs,  my French has completely reduced to not much more than ordering food in restaurants in France.  Though must say that's the most vital thing for me in  my life. :p

Yeah, the man said '200 kilo flour' but I wonder if it's the total amount of flour they use a day. I mean, that's a lot of flour to go in to that bowl!  I could only pick up a few words here and there, so I may be wrong, but maybe what he  meant was  '200kg of flour goes through this machine' during the operation (in several batches)???

But whatever that is, it's still a lot of breads for the market! :)

lumos

 

 

cranbo's picture
cranbo

Nice share thanks!

RE: the automatic roll shaper, they're not that uncommon. I was watching "Meat & Potatoes" on Food Network, Dong Phuong in NOLA uses one for their banh mi bread. Would be nice to have one at home though ;)

I did like the stretch-n-fold as well. 

lumos's picture
lumos

OK, thanks! Never seen it but it was very interesting the basic mechanism was based on how a human hand moves when rolling the dough. So the modern one for mass producing rolls are basically scaled up verson of that?

Yeah, the S & F duvets. :p  Looks like the hydration is not very high. Maybe around 65% or less, and with quite strong flour, I guess....

 

Just Loafin's picture
Just Loafin

Thanks for sharing that! I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it! A treasure...  : )

- Keith

Franko's picture
Franko

Thanks Jeremy for posting that very interesting little clip to watch. I got a laugh out of seeing the divider/rounder as they haven't really changed in function in all this time. There are fancier ones that divide and round in a continuous stream of 4 or more conveyor belts carrying buns, but the basic divider rounder pictured in the clip is still the standard, but with modern styling of course. Fairly expensive, but worth their weight in gold for more efficient production.

Best wishes,

Franko

lumos's picture
lumos

Thanks for the info, Franko. :)

A 'divider/rounder' (=another new vocabulary for me! ) of that size is cute, but a thought of that in an extremely scaled-version pumping out enough buns continuously for 4 or more conveyer belts is a bit ......scary.:p

Mebake's picture
Mebake

Thanks for posting. I know some french. and the guy says that from kneading time to out of oven is 4 hours. That is quite fast! we are dinosaur era bread maniacs, then!