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The Gisborne Photo News

 
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No 82 : April 20, 1961

32

Fifty-Thousand Hot Cross Buns

Old customs die hard. In Europe, priests still light bonfires on Easter Eve, and wherever the firelight reaches, the fields will be fruitful and the inhabitants free of sickness and danger. Games, dances and songs once celebrated Easter, and for these special cakes were made. And from this custom, "hot cross buns" have come down to the present day.

We took our cameras along to the busy bakery of Walter Findlay Ltd. just before last Easter to see the buns being made...just on 50,000 of them. The place was humming with activity as the staff, using modern machinery and big electric ovens, turned out buns by the thousand, 60 to a tray, 34 trays in the ovens at one time... and every bun with its little symbolic cross.

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Max Lewis putting one of the trays in the oven

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Machanical mixer prepares materials

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Stewart Mann feeding the mix into a machine which shapes 4200 buns an hour, while Brian White stacks them on a tray.

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Ray Reichenbach putting on the crosses before the buns go into the ovens.

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Essential for those with a sweet tooth....Mick Torrie painting sugar glaze on the buns after they have been baked.

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Walter Findlay jr. and Denis Allen, literally surrounded by buns, packing them ready for delivery to the shops.

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