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It's remarkable how we take for granted the commonplace things of life. Take bread, for example. When we go to the store we pick up the bread, pop it in a basket, take it home, cut it butter it and eat it. And about the only thought we give to it is that it's fresh, or, in a couple of day's time, that it's stale. But let someone forget to get the weekend bread and then there's trouble. Then bread is not so commonplace. It's a necessity.
Nelson is served by several bakeries, but to give you an idea of just what is involved in the baking of the loaves you eat, we took our camera into Freeman's Bakery, Here we found the staff preparing for the weekend's baking. This involves the making and baking of 26 doughs, or the mixing of 12,500 lb of flour into dough to supply Nelson. This makes about 6000 loaves. This work is carried on until well past dawn. Above, the baking is finished and the vans are loaded ready for deliveries.

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First step in the making of bread is to ensure that all commodities are free of imperfections. At left, a sifter removes all tiny wheat husks that remain after the milling and the virgin flour enters the dough-making bowl ready for the next step. Gone are the days when the dough was mixed by hand. Today, huge mixers transform the flour and other ingredients (salt, yeast, margarine, sugar and water) into the dough. This very delicate operation, the key to good bread, is carefully watched by the dough maker, Bill Hunter (above)

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Leo Ivamy cuts a section of dough from the huge bowlful and sends it down the chute where a machine automatically cuts it to required size and weight.

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The cut dough then is kneaded into the correct shape as it passes up this mechanical spiral and then into a conveyor, attended here by Gary Harman.

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After another rolling process the dough comes off another conveyor where the patially split doughs are separated and loaded into tins ready for the oven, a job we found foreman Bill Brown doing.

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A relic of bygone days, an old brick oven inspected by Doug Herman

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Fred Bothwell whips the trays of newly-baked bread from the gleaming, automatic oven

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You want your bread sliced, so that's what Wally Holland and this modern machine will give you.

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And on to the table