JF Ptak Science Books Post 2752
“It is pleasant to think that our jolly tars are no sufferers by this expeditious mode of making their sea bread. It seems to be admitted that the machine made biscuits are better mixed and better kneaded than those made by hand. The three bakeries at the three arsenals before named could produce when at full work six or eight thousand tons of biscuits in a year which would effect a saving of ten or twelve thousand a year as compared with the old method.”
This is the paragraph that ends the long selection, below, taken from The Pictorial and Literary Sketch Book of the British Empire, (volume 1, published by Charles Knight, London, 1849). It is a great and lovely ending and also a fine beginning to describing a curious and engaging article, “Biscuit Baking Machinery”, in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, 1833. Overall, this is a chapter in the history of machine-over-human, of “Mechanization Takes Command” (with reference to Giedion's superb and occasionally gut-wrenching book), and takes place in regards to sea biscuits, Jolly Tars, and a beautifully named Royal Clarence Victualling Establishment (“at Weevil, near Portsmouth”)
It all boils out to biscuits. And in this case a Mr. T.T. Grant received a 2000-pound grant to develop his machine. The article goes into some great detail on it, though I found this curious before-and-after article (quoted below) that describes the biscuits made by hand and those by machine. One thing was certain: the machinery saved time in labor and also seems to have cut cost by 75%. In any event, I wanted to share these two episodes in the early stages of the introduction of machines in the mass production of food.
“The biscuit machinery at Gosport is as complete a thing in its way as the block machinery at Portsmouth and the saving which it has effected in manual labour is not less striking. To understand properly the improvement in this respect it is well to know how sea biscuits were formerly made: flour and water were put into a large trough and mixed up into dough by the naked arms of a workman called the driver a slow and very laborious employment; this dough was then kneaded by a roller which was made to work over and upon it in a very odd manner. Being rolled and kneaded into a thin sheet the dough was cut into slips by enormous knives and these slips cut into small pieces each sufficient for one biscuit each biscuit was worked into a circular form by the hand stamped pierced with holes and baked.
“The placing in the oven was a remarkably dexterous part of the business. A man stood before the open door of the oven having in his hand the handle of a long shovel called the peel the other end of which was lying flat in the oven. Another man took the biscuits as fast as they were formed and stamped and threw them into the oven with such undeviating accuracy that they always fell on the peel. The man with the peel then arranged the biscuits side by side over the whole floor of the oven. Seventy biscuits were thrown into the oven and regularly arranged in one minute the attention of each man being strictly directed to his own department for a delay of a single second on the part of any one man would have disturbed the whole gang.”
“But well arranged as this system seems to have been it could not maintain its place against the efficiency of machinery. Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Deptford have all of them biscuit making machinery on a magnificent scale. We may almost say that we see the corn go in at one end and see the biscuits come out at the other. The corn is ground by mills in the usual way and the meal or flour descends into a kind of hollow cylinder where the requisite quantity of water is added to it. Round and round this cylinder revolves and a series of long knives within it so hacks and cuts and divides the contents that as the meal and water become mixed up into dough these knives knead it in a way that has never been equaled by human arms. Not a lump or an ill regulated mass can escape the close action of these knives all are cut through and incorporated in an equable state among the rest of the dough. But we ought not to say that the dough is kneaded by this means it is only mixed. The kneading is performed by ponderous masses called breaking rollers. The dough is spread out flat on an iron table and two rollers not much less than a ton weight each are worked to and fro over it until the dough is perfectly kneaded.
“The celerity with which these operations are conducted is quite marvellous.”
“It is said that two minutes time is sufficient for the thorough mixture of five hundred weight of dough in the cylinder and that five minutes suffice for kneading this dough under the rollers. The sheet of dough is brought to a thickness of about two inches it is cut into pieces half a yard square and each of these is passed under a second pair of rollers by which it is extended to a size of about two yards by one just sufficient in thickness for the biscuits to be made. A very remarkable cutting instrument is then made to descend upon the thin sheet of dough by which it is at one stroke divided into hexagonal or six sided biscuits each which is at the same time and by the same blow punctured and stamped. The biscuits are not actually severed one from another so that the sheet of dough still remains so far coherent as to be put into an oven in its unsevered form. A flat sheet of about sixty biscuits six to the pound on an average is put into the oven baked for about ten or twelve minutes withdrawn broken up separately and stored away. All the sea biscuits used to be circular but it is found that there is less waste of time and material by making them six sided.”
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