Golden ticket to bread

I stood there watching a bread train pass overhead. There were more than five miles of conveyor belts above, weaving back and forth, noisily transporting fresh-baked loaves from the oven to plastic bags and twist ties.
I felt like Charlie in a Chocolate Factory, after the arrival of an Oompa-Loompa.
But I wasn't Charlie; I was Diane in a Schwebel Bakery on Midlothian Boulevard. And, this, of course, was better to me than a chocolate river and Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delights.
I had no idea when I wrote about my love affair with bread that so many people would embrace me. First, there were the Drakes who took me to their farm to bake a loaf. Then Lee Schwebel called and suggested I take a tour. Lee is director of corporate communications and the great-grandson of the company's founders, Joseph and Dora Schwebel.
I went from kneading four cups of flour in a Tupperware bowl to watching a sponge mixer spin 1,600 pounds of flour and water into shape. Everyone in the factory -- and there aren't as many as you might expect, since so much is automated -- wears ear protection. It was clear why as Lee shouted over the din, explaining the process to me as we walked through the humid factory.
Bread creation
Dough from the mixer goes into the bottom six inches of a 12-foot trough, and is left to rise about three feet to the top. After it does, it's back to the sponge mixer to get the special flours that make a variety of breads.
Salt is added to the now 2,000-pound slab of dough which returns to the trough. This is more dough than I have seen in my lifetime.
Now, the real fun begins as contraptions that would make Willy Wonka proud divide 120 to 150 hunks of dough a minute, pass them into a rounder, drop them onto a conveyor belt "to relax," send them to a kneader, then a de-gasser, and roll them into loaf shapes, ready to be dropped into pans five abreast. (Schwebel's has three bakeries besides the one in Youngstown baking breads and rolls daily. Each one is going through some version of this drill!)
Next, the pans slide into the proofbox to allow the dough to rise a last time. This, Lee said, is the part where grandma covered the loaf with a damp towel. I dipped my head into the proofbox and water formed on my cheeks. The smell of yeast was intense.
Next step
When the dough comes out of the proofbox, it fills the pans, then it's up, up and away on the conveyor belts again. The loaf pans are pushed 10 at a time into a huge oven that holds 50 loaves simultaneously, staying for exactly 17 minutes at 450 degrees.
The pans come out of the oven (Do you remember the old Schwebel jingle? "It's tasty, it's toasty, with crust golden brown, I'm happy ...") and suction cups pull the loaves from the pan. At 204 degrees, the loaves are too hot to handle, so the bread takes off on its journey overhead. The miles of conveyor belts are used for cooling.
About 400 people work in the Youngstown factory, carrying out everything from transferring the dough to distributing the bread. Amazing as the automated bread making is, it is the distribution, Lee said, which is the real "logistical miracle." He showed me a chart with a dozen breads and rolls listed. "We have to get the bread onto the trucks fresh and to the right locations," he said.
At the end of the line, the bread, now cooled, journeys to a slicer where a Schwebel's worker rights the loaf and helps it into the slicer in the right direction. A puff of air opens a plastic bag; the bread goes in; a twist tie goes on, all without a person's help. Amazing!
Not everything is off the high-speed line, though. Some breads are made "the old-fashioned way" in a hearth bread oven. (In a refrigerated room, there is a trough with the original rye starter Dora Schwebel used in 1906.)
By the end of my tour, the factory floor in front of the loading docks was covered with rolling carts of bagels, buns and bread. "This will all be gone tonight," Lee said.
I went home with my own version of an Everlasting Gobstopper -- a loaf of Schwebel's potato bread.
murphy@vindy.com