Supermarkets - the Megathread

SmartinMartin wrote: »

While we're on the subject, I know Lidl bake their bread etc on site, but does anyone know do they use fresh ingredients or is it from frozen dough? To settle an argument. I'm saying fresh.

AFAIK the way it is done is the dough is made in a central facility, likely outsourced to a bakery. They par-bake the dough to about 50% baked and then blast chill it until its frozen.Then it gets delivered to individual stores and is baked again to finish it off. That gives the shop the bakery smell they want to tempt people but it doesnt involve any bakery skill to achieve it, there is no kneading or anything in the store because its already formed and shaped. They just put it in the ovens for a set amount of time to finish off the baking. If there was proper baking going on in the store you'd see flour on the tables and floor of the bakery but there isnt as its really just a 'finishing' operation.

Anyway had an email from Tesco earlier. Seems they are snowed under with online deliveries and are now asking people to 'Think before you Click', i.e. if you can physically get to a store then you should do so and leave the delivery slots to people who are in the most need of them.

That suggests that they cannot scale their online delivery service to meet current demand and nor do the expect to. They're basically throwing in the towel and asking people to go to the store.

Yeah I think by par baking all the difficult stuff like kneading and shaping the dough is done in the bakery, it makes the shop part of it very straight forward for the staff working it.

You could still be right to say that it is delivered fresh but my guess would be it is frozen to give it a longer shelf life and to avoid the need for deliveries too frequently. The dough can then be baked and finished off direct from frozen.