Detailed Bread Production Process: From Ingredients to Packaging and Common Production Issues

Learning English requires not only mastering grammar and vocabulary but also being able to use them naturally in real-life situations. However, textbook sentences are often too formal and differ greatly from expressions used in daily life. To speak authentic, natural English, one must engage with real-world conversations. Here, we have selected commonly used English expressions in daily life, covering social, work, and travel scenarios, helping you move beyond 'textbook English' and learn phrases actually used by native speakers. Below is the content from New Cambridge Business English (Elementary) Unit 13a. Consistent practice will make your English closer to real life!

Unit 13A, production, listening one. So, this is a diagram of the bakery. Now it all begins with the main ingredients. Those are flour and water. They're weighed and fed automatically into mixers. Yeast and additives are then added by hand. And everything is mixed together for 12 minutes to make the dough. Well, what are the additives for? Oh, they're just to increase the shelf life of the baguettes. The dough is then divided into pieces. After the weight is checked, the dough enters the first proofer for 10 minutes. It's the first what? Prover. What's a proofer? I can tell you haven't baked bread before. No, that's very true. Well, you can't bake the dough straight away. You have to let it stand for a while so the yeast can react before you form it. This is called proving, right? Well, now the yeast makes the dough rise and gives the bread shape and volume.

All right, I see. So the dough is then formed into a baguette and dropped onto trays, which continuously circulate. The trays take the baguettes into another proofer for 60 minutes. The temperature in the proofer is perfect for the yeast to make the bread rise even more. 60 minutes, that long. The proofer stage is very important. If the bread doesn't prove properly, you can't bake it. Now the trays continue around the oven circuit where the bread is baked for 10 minutes. After leaving the oven, the trays enter the cooler, where cool air is blown over them for 40 minutes. The baguettes are then taken off the trays and dropped into plastic baskets for packaging. The trays continue around the circuit and return to the start. And what happens to the baguettes? Oh, they're taken to the packing hall where they're wrapped and boxed in this batch. The entire process, from flour to boxed products, takes about 2.5 hours.

Unit 13A. Production. Listening to. So, Brian, what problems do you have with the production line? Well, we have many problems with sensors. These are electronic sensors that tell the computer when a tray enters or leaves a prover or oven. The computer monitors the circuit and controls the speed of the trays. The computer stops the whole process when a sensor stops working properly. A complete shutdown. Really? Well, remember the line produces 6,000 baguettes an hour. Timing must be perfect, or the system stops. Sensors must be set up exactly right. If they aren't, the computer won't start the system.

What other problems do you have? Well, sometimes we have problems with the mixes. If the computer gets the mix wrong, we have to clean out the whole mixer. Do you have any problems with your workers? Not often, no. The system produces a new mix every 12 minutes, so it is possible that a mixer operator can forget to put in the yeast and additives. If he forgets the extra ingredients, we lose the whole mix.

Any other kinds of problems? Occasionally, we have mechanical problems. Like when an old tray loses its shape, it can jam in a prover or oven. That can be a big problem because it can damage the machine and jam the whole system. How much time do you lose on average per day? Oh, that's difficult to say, really. On a good day, maybe six minutes? We can lose up to an hour and a half of production on a really bad day, which means nearly 10,000 baguettes.

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