It all starts when the office prints off tomorrow's production sheets and leaves for the night bakers, telling them the total numbers for what they need to make ready for the morning sales. From these sheets the baker calculates how many doughs to make and the ingredients required to produce the right amount of products. They then begin weighing down; a term used to measure the ingredients, so an important job that leaves no room for error! During our night shift we weigh down enough ingredients to make 9 or more large doughs, this is done the traditional way, by hand using a set of scales and weights.

The first of our many bread doughs is in the large spiral mixer, we use different speeds and timings depending on the dough. Whilst in the mixer the dough is continuously kneaded and when ready, the baker removes the large dough from the bowl and leaves to rest. The dough is then divided into pieces and weighed to ensure we make the right size loaf, this is how you get your small and large loaves. We mould the dough, turning the dough into different styles such as bloomer loaves, which we bake on perforated trays, and sandwich and farmhouse loaves, which are baked in tins.

By 21.00 the bakery is alive with activity, all 4 night bakers are in and working full speed with no time for error as everything is on the clock, one small delay could impact the whole shift. The first of the white bread doughs is out of the provers and into our hot ovens. As we produce such large volumes of bread throughout the night we use Provers prior to baking as they help us improve the fermentation process, as the more warmth and humidity the faster the dough will rise! Provers provide this consistent, controlled temperature and humidity and without them we would never get your fresh loaves out on time!

Almost halfway through the shift and the team's busy mixing, scaling, moulding, proving, multi-tasking is key in this job! The white bread is cooling and now the bakers are working the soft dough to create the many lines of rolls and baps. The bun dough is in the mixer and the first batch of Norfolk Crunch bread is coming out the ovens. The doughnut fryer is on ready for frying and the first of our team of packers arrive to start their shift of bread slicing, wrapping and packing orders, and yet there's still so much more to make and finish... Wholemeal bread, more Norfolk crunch bread, Multi-seed bread, French baguettes, crusty rolls and all our morning buns too.

The bakery racks are filling with rolls... white rolls, wholemeal rolls, flour baps, plain baps, seeded baps, large baps, finger rolls, torpedo rolls, cottage rolls, dinner rolls; Everywhere you look there's rolls! During a night shift we produce over 2,500 rolls for our shops and wholesale deliveries and they all need to be wrapped in packs of 2's, 4's and 6's, so it's important they're left to cool before the packers start wrapping. Just before 2am the last of the rolls are out the ovens, these are the famous Christmas Bakery crusty rolls, and once they're out the first of the night bakers heads home.

As we approach the witching hour and you're tucked up in bed sweet dreaming, we're finishing the sweet stuff! The jam doughnuts are jammed, the Chelsea buns, Swiss buns and Danish pastries are iced, the Devon buns and Cream doughnuts are filled and down at the ovens the croissants are lined up ready for their bake. As the second night baker finishes it's the packing team now working at full speed! They're hard at work packing all the customer orders for our wholesale deliveries, with only 1 hour before the first of the delivery vans leaves, they're busy wrapping and packing to ensure all the vans leave on time.

At 5am the last two night bakers head home, while the packing team continue to pack the last of our customer orders for the morning deliveries, and as their shift comes to an end another shift starts..... At 6am our day bakers arrive, and all the freshly baked breads, rolls, buns and pastries are then wheeled into the Worplesdon shop ready for opening for you to enjoy! Our team of day bakers then spend their day busy making a range of confectionery, puff pastries, decorating celebration cakes, making tasty savouries including our bacon puffs, pizzas and quiches, before they clean down and set the bakery up ready for that night shift to start all over again...