Our daily bread and toast!!

​Our Daily Bread and toast!!​​

#Bread has been around as a staple food throughout the world for over 12,000 years. Indeed many different cultures have their own types of bread, both leavened and unleavened, thin, thick, whole and now sliced. It can be steamed, baked, cooked on a flat or curved metal pan, cooked in a tandoor or fried (eg mantou, ordinary loaves/baguettes, chapatti or Middle Eastern/North African flat bread, nan, puri, bhatura, to name but a few)........it can also be grilled or toasted in a toaster which is what I will talk about toady. I would like to stress from the outset that bread in any form should Always be taken in moderation.

This morning I, along with a few other bloggers, were invited to the Kingsmill in East #Belfast for a tour and then a taste of their new product, a slice of the Kingsmill Super Toasty loaf with butter and tea!!! The new product is being rolled out officially on 23rd February 2017 which just so coincides with National Toast Day. The Bakery has been in East Belfast since the 1950’s and these premises are operational since the 1980’s (it was Sunblest before). They employ about 300 people and apart from bread they make potato bread, soda bread and pancakes (more on that later).

The company is owned by Allied Bakeries which is owned by Associated British Foods (ABF). All their raw materials come from local or national suppliers either part of ABF or independent suppliers. The Flour comes from Neill’s Flour (who are celebrating their 150th birthday this year, happy birthday guys!!), yeast comes from Mauri in England, sugar comes from British Sugar Plc., eggs come from Glenshane or Ready Eggs and butter milk comes from Dale Farm (last three go into making pancakes).

The whole bread making process from mixing flour, water, yeast and sugar to finished product takes about 4 hours. The dough once mixed proves for 50 minutes at 36oC. Its then divided into approx 500 and 900g balls. During cooking process the core temperature is 94-96oC and then bread enters the cooler for 2 ½ hours where the core temp drops to 27oC and the finished loaf is either 400g or 750/800g. A Super Toasty Loaf has 16 slices, the Thick has 19 and Medium has 21 slices respectively. The plant produces 3000 loaves per hour and runs 24/7 for 6 days, with Saturday being down time and cleaning. So there is 156 hours of continual baking producing about 460,000 loaves per week!!!!

After our tour we got to try some fresh #toast with butter and tea and it was delicious. I would certainly recommend you all to try this toast and taste it for yourself. My one little bone of contention would be that a slice of this bread contains 21.2 g carbohydrate (starch) and 1.8g sugar. So it has a high glycaemic index and MUST be eaten in Moderation. Please read: My big story

With #pancakeday coming up next week these guys are really busy making pancakes. They are churning out 3,000,000 per week!!! So do you like making your own or will you buy readymade?

I wish to thank Kingsmill and Smarts Communicate for their very kind invite. To sign off I would say buy these products as they are as local as you can get.

 www.belfastfoodman.com

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