All language subtitles for Inside.the.Factory.S08E04.Stuffed.Pasta.1080p.iP.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-VTM_track3_[eng]

# E mi chiedo val la pena

# Di restare qui abbracciati?

# Mentre il giorno ce piu
e la luna da lassu

# Fa da specchio ai nostri baci... #

Here in Britain,
we love our Italian food.

And one of our best loved dishes
is stuffed pasta.

My favourite is tortellini.

For me, it's ravioli
with Parmesan on top.

In the UK, we spend around
£130 million

on these Italian classics
every year.

And to find out how
it's produced...

..we've come to a factory
that's been making it since 1929.

Ow! Ow, ow!

I'm Gregg Wallace...

GREGG SCREAMS, LAUGHS

..and tonight, I'm following
the production of stuffed pasta,

from full-flavoured ingredients...

I've never seen this amount
of shellfish, ever.

..to speciality dough...

It's much denser, much heavier.

If I had to mix and knead this by
hand, I'd have forearms like Popeye.

..to see how these
produce-packed parcels are formed.

You're making it look home-made.

You clever boy.

I'm Cherry Healey...

DISCORDANT SQUEALING AND SCREECHING
Oh, God!

..and I'll be orchestrating
an experiment

to find out if sound can affect
our sense of taste.

This a bit more sour, more bitter.

That is the sourest music
known to humankind.

And historian Ruth Goodman is
investigating how Italian migrants

helped to rebuild war-torn Britain.

So why does Bedford have such
a large Italian community?

It's all about this.

A brick.

500 million pasta parcels are made
in this factory every year.

And we're going to reveal
just how they do it.

Welcome to Inside The Factory.

This is the Dell'Ugo factory
in Borehamwood,

just north of London.

It's a family-run business
that's been making pasta

for four generations.

They make a range
of fresh egg pasta,

from lasagne sheets
to spinach and ricotta tortellini.

But I'm making one of their
best-selling stuffed pastas -

the crab and crayfish raviolo.

Raviolo are stuffed squares

that are just a bit bigger
than their little cousins, ravioli.

And to make the crab and crayfish
filling for our parcels,

we need a selection of shellfish.

So I'm heading to the factory's
intake area...

..to catch a delivery with factory
manager Cesar Da Rocha.

Cesar!
Yes.

Right, tell me,
what have you got on there?

OK, so in here, we have our
weekly delivery of crayfish.

We get delivered a pallet
every week.

In each pallet,
we have about 50 cases. 480 kilos.

Almost half a tonne?!
Yes.

Of crayfish?
Yes, yes.

Now, where do they come from?

These specific ones,
they come from Denmark.

From Denmark? Yeah.
Are they fresh? Are they frozen?

They come in frozen.
You know what? Let me show you.

Sure. Let me get them off
and show you.

And as Cesar unloads the 480 kilo
delivery of crayfish...

..production of my raviolo begins.

So this is the crayfish tails
that we get delivered. Ah.

You get the tai...
Ah, just the tails.

Yes, just the tail. They come
pre-shelled and pre-cooked.

I actually have some crayfish here.
I'm going to show you.

Pretty little things, ain't they?
Yes.

They're closely related to lobster.

These ones,
they come from fresh water.

They live mainly in streams
and lakes.

In terms of flavour,
the flavour you get out of these

is a combination of lobster,
crab, shrimp,

maybe not as salty, a bit sweeter.

And this delivery you've got here,

how many raviolo would you expect
to make with it?

Way over 200,000 individual raviolo.

Very impressive.

Cesar, thank you.

Along with the crayfish, our pasta
parcels contain another shellfish,

one of my favourites, crab.

And Cherry has nipped to the coast

to find a catch of these
big-clawed crustaceans.

This pretty seaside town
is a little gem.

It's a favourite for
holidaying families,

but it's also world-famous
for crab fishing.

I'm on the Norfolk coast in Cromer.

These days, we think of seafood
as being caught by huge trawlers,

but here, the work is done
by small boats

that land right on that beach there.

And I'm waiting for one to return
any minute now.

I think I see him.

He's on his way.

Norfolk's nutrient-rich waters
are home to Cromer crabs,

prized for being flavoursome,
fragrant, and tender.

John Davies began fishing for them
on his dad's boat 45 years ago.

Hi, John.
Hiya!

Can I come aboard?
You are more than welcome.

Just be careful.
I will.

So this is what you were after.
Yeah.

They're still alive.
I can't pick one out.

I might lose my finger. Well,
they'll only give you a little nip.

What's so special about
a Cromer crab?

I put it down to the chalk and the
flint seabed that they're on,

and its lovely clean fresh water.

A bit like a chalk stream trout

compared to one that's come from
a muddy reservoir.

Crabs often live under rocks
on the seabed,

and can't be fished with nets,

so instead, they're caught in traps.

John uses traditional parlour pots,
which are baited with pieces of fish

and left on the seabed for a couple
of days to lure in the crabs.

How many of these pots
do you have out there?

How many do you pull up in a day?

We put an awful lot of these
on the seabed.

I've got over 1,000 pots
out at the moment. Wow.

And they'll be in what we call
shanks or lines of 25.

That's sort of comfortable
for this boat to hold.

So we haul 25 up and re-bait them,
stack them.

And on the day, we'll do anything
from 200 to 300 pots a day.

To sustain the crab population,

young ones measuring less than
11.5 centimetres

are returned to the sea.

Measure at the widest part,
from there to there,

and you can see that's easily
our legal size.

Today, John's crew have hauled
300 kilos of mature crab.

To keep it as fresh as possible,
it's processed the same day

just a mile down the road
at Jonas Seafood,

where I'm meeting owner Kevin Jonas.

Hi, Kevin. Lovely to meet you.
Hiya.

I mean, there is crab everywhere.

Every single surface, every box,
is just full of crab.

Yeah, so today we're cooking
five tonne of crab,

about 10,000 individual crab.

To process the crabs,
they're electrically stunned

before passing through a cooker
where they're immersed in water

at 98 degrees Celsius
for 25 minutes.

What happens now these crabs
are all cooked?

So they move them slowly through
this cooling belt.

What would happen if you cooled
these crabs down

really, really fast? You'd lose the
quality of the texture of the meat.

It would become very runny. Oh.
So it wouldn't be the same.

That's absolutely not what you want.

No, it wouldn't be the Cromer crab
that we sell.

Once the crabs are cooled
to under 5 degrees Celsius,

the meat is removed from the shell.

It's a fiddly process
that's too intricate for a machine,

so 30 people tackle this painstaking
job, called picking,

getting through 4,000 crabs a day.

Do you need an extra pair of hands?

Absolutely. Always.
All right. Put me to work.

Tsarinka Ivanova has been here
for five years.

Hello!
Hi.

I hear you are the fastest picker
in the east of England.

Will you teach me your ways?
Of course I will.

OK. So we both have a crab.
What do we do now?

So now we have to break it
into pieces.

First we take off the legs,

then the claws and the bony abdomen.

Oh, wow. Oh, that actually comes off
quite easily. Yes.

It's a myth that some parts
of the crab are poisonous,

but the mouth, stomach and lungs,
or gills,

have a bitter, unpleasant taste.

With the knife,
you can take out all the brown meat.

The shell contains
mainly brown meat.

The crab's equivalent to its liver,
it has a sweet taste.

Most of the bold-flavoured white
meat is found in the legs and claws.

So now... Yeah.
..we have to break the claw.

With a knife.
OK.

Smash it!
Smash it, yeah.

Smash it!

How long does it take you to do one
of these normally?

Five minutes.

It's really fiddly, and you've got
to have such attention to detail.

To get the very last bits
of meat from the legs,

Kevin's company uses a machine.

That's it. Tip them all in.

It's like a super-sized garlic press
squeezing out the final flakes.

What it is,
it's a very powerful motor

which is squeezing the legs
against a drum,

which has had 1.6 millimetre holes
drilled in it.

So anything under 1.6 millimetre,

all the meat,
falls into the meat section.

So meat that way,
shell down and out.

Yeah. That's the plan.

Get every last bit of meat
out of those crabs.

Less than 24 hours
after they're brought ashore,

Cromer crabs are cooked, picked,
packed, and frozen,

ready to travel the 137 miles
to our factory.

# Figaro!

# Son qua!

# Figaro! Son qua!

# Figaro qua, Figaro la,
Figaro qua, Figaro la,

# Figaro su, Figaro giu,
Figaro su, Figaro giu

# Pronto prontissimo son come
il fulmine

# Sono il factotum della citta... #

Here in Borehamwood...

..crab from Cromer,
along with the cartons of crayfish,

have been transported from intake
to the kitchen...

..where I'm meeting director
and joint owner of the factory,

Charlie Ugo.

Ooh, lovely!

Charlie. Gregg. Good to meet you.
Good to meet you.

Not often I actually get to chat

with one of the owners
of the company. Indeed.

Right, what have we got to do?

So we're making our filling
for our crab and crayfish raviolo.

Where do we start?
Start with the crab.

We've got two types of crab meat.

We've got our leg meat
and we've got our purse meat.

Purse? If you look at a crab
from the top,

you'll see that the shell,
without the legs,

looks a little bit like
a lady's purse.

I've been in food for 30 years,
I've never heard it called a purse.

Not everybody uses the brown meat.
Why do you combine the two?

The leg meat is very original crab
flavour, it adds that fishiness,

it adds the texture and the bite.

But the brown meat actually adds
a sweet, delicate flavour.

I find the brown actually better
flavour than the white. Absolutely.

How much crab are you using
in each batch?

OK, so this batch we're doing today,
it's total 125 kilos of filling.

That's 26 kilos of crab.

That will make about 210 kilos
of finished raviolo,

which is about 8,000, 8,500
individual pieces.

So over here, Gregg, you'll see
we're preparing some of the herbs

and other ingredients that add
a lot of flavour to the mix.

Can I help? Please, Gregg. Is that
all right? If you can get in.

Because what you're doing here
is cooking. Absolutely.

Just on a big scale.

Parsley and coriander
are sent frozen from France

and defrosted at the factory.

You don't see a lot of coriander
in Italian food. Correct.

Parsley is west
and coriander is east, like Asian.

Yep.
It's an unusual combination.

What we've realised over the years,
Gregg, is that the English palate

is quite distinctly different
from the Italian palate.

And English people in general,
the Brits,

love their own flavour profiles.

Which is why they have pineapple
on pizza, right? Absolutely.

The coriander and parsley,
in combination with all the other

flavours that we have,
allow us to cover

all of the major five flavours.

What's the five flavours?

Salty, sweet, sour, bitter.

What's the other one?
Umami.

The aim of any recipe
is to create a balance

of these flavour combinations
to achieve the desired taste...

..and umami is known
as the fifth flavour.

It's intensely savoury.

Imparted by glutamates, an amino
acid that occurs naturally

in foods such as meat,
fish and vegetables...

Phwoar!

..like chilli and garlic.

What's next, Charlie?

Next thing on the list, Gregg,
is mayonnaise.

Mayo adds a creamy texture

that helps to bind the rest
of the ingredients...

..before 300g of salt is added.

With the herb mix ready,
it's the moment of truth...

Right, now we're ready to mix,
Gregg.

..bringing all the ingredients
together.

This is our filling mixing system.

Into a large mixer
goes 20kg of crayfish...

I've never seen this amount
of shellfish, ever.

Ever, ever, ever.

..26 kilos of crab meat...

You can see the mixture there
of the brown and the white

in different textures.

..and blue whiting, a fish from
the same family as cod and haddock.

It adds a fish stock flavour
and yet more texture.

Shall I add my flavour mix now?

Absolutely. It's time, Gregg.

Once my carefully-weighed herb mix
goes in,

lobster stock made with the broth
of their boiled shells,

and lemon juice is spread
over the top.

And that freshly-squeezed lemon
juice ever so slightly enhances

the herbs as you're pouring it in,
very lightly acidifies them.

And it's finally time for mixing.

We've got to rotate this,
mix it over in two directions.

And it's really important we get
the time exactly right here.

We need to make sure
it doesn't damage the texture.

So I'm going to ask you
to time for us.

I have a little stopwatch here.

I need you to mix one way
for 32 seconds

and then the other way
for 32 seconds.

Oh, properly precise.

32 seconds in one direction.

If we mix this too fast,

we're in danger of smashing up all
the fish and we'll lose our texture.

Absolutely.

If you do it for too long,
it will turn into a paste, a mush.

So please make sure as soon as
we hit the 32 seconds

that we stop this rotation.

And now we go in the opposite
direction. Yeah.

Can't believe that is so precise.

When have you ever read a cooking
instruction that says,

"Blend for 32 seconds in one,
blend for 32 seconds in the other"?

BEEP

Fantastic.

Having mixed for
the required 64 seconds,

we add 15kg of salted butter,
melted at 40 degrees Celsius...

Look at that.

Oo-o-oh!

..before the final ingredient.

Gregg, the last thing we need to do
is bind this all together.

Breadcrumbs. Absolutely.
Breadcrumbs.

And they will soak up
any extra moisture.

Mixed for precisely
one minute and 34 seconds,

the filling is ready.

Look at that texture. That is
perfect for our filling, Gregg.

How long did it take to perfect
this recipe and the stirring times?

How long? It's taken
over 20 years, Gregg,

to get this recipe
what it is today.

The last bit of our mixing stage
is the quality check.

Really?
I'll leave it up to you.

Do you want to give it a taste
for us, please?

Let us know if it meets
the standards.

Do you want to know whether
you're going through

to a quarterfinal, do you?

I've got a tiny little bit of lemon.
Yeah. Tiny little bit of salt.

Tiny little bit of chilli,
tiny little bit of herbs. Good.

But moreover, what I've got
is fresh fish in here.

Exactly what we're looking for,
Gregg.

We could now take a big
ladle full of that

and put it into a bucket of pasta.
Absolutely. We've got lunch!

Absolutely. You can put it in
a sandwich if you like.

There's an idea.

Have you got any brown bread
and butter? Of course.

Let's go and have some.
Crab sandwiches. Got any chips?

Two hours and 21 minutes after
our crayfish arrived at the factory,

125 kilos of precisely combined
filling is dropped into tubs

and sent into the fridge
for 24 hours -

a vital process that helps
to develop the flavours.

Perfecting the flavour combinations
will ensure my pasta packs a punch.

But when it comes to
how things taste,

can our ears have an impact too?

Cherry has been investigating.

LIGHT EDM PLAYS

There's something not quite right
about this restaurant.

My eyes are saying
beautiful Italian food,

but my ears are saying
something very different.

SWOONING ITALIAN—STYLE
CANZONE PLAYS

Ah, that's better.

So can sound affect
our sense of taste?

To find out, I'm meeting
Professor Charles Spence,

an expert in sensory perception
from the University of Oxford.

Charles, hello.
Hi there.

So we're in a recording studio
because you're going to explain

how taste and our hearing
are connected.

The sounds of the environment
in which we eat and drink,

be it the background music, be it
soundscapes or the noise of nature,

all of those affect
our taste perception.

Do I really register that
in how I taste things?

Perhaps the best thing to do
is for you to be my guinea pig.

See you in a minute.
All right.

Charles calls this theory
"sonic seasoning,"

and to test it, he's brought along

three quintessential Italian
food and drink items.

I am going to get you to taste
each of the foods in turn,

first in silence,
and then with a piece of music.

First up is black coffee.

So it's quite bitter.

There's a little hint of sweetness.

GENTLE, HIGH-PITCHED TWINKLY TUNE

Then Charles plays a
specially-composed piece of music

that's supposed to stimulate
my brain.

The insular cortex,
deep within the brain,

is responsible for
our sense of taste.

Specific regions of the insular
react to different tastes,

such as sweet and sour.

But can a piece of music
also act as a taste trigger?

It seems a bit sweeter.

That's right.
Is that... Is that right?!

CHARLES CHUCKLES

So the first track there
was the sweet track,

which is based on our research
showing that sweetness,

people associate more with
high pitch than with low pitch.

They associate it with instruments
like tinkling pianos, wind chimes.

Now a silent glass of Pinot Grigio.

It's a little bit sharp.
It's not terribly sweet.

HIGH PITCHED, SHRILL,
DISCORDANT SQUEALS

And with specially composed, er,
not sure I can call this...

Ugh. Total... God!

..music!

Tastes a bit more sour or bitter.

It was a bit more unpleasant.

That was our second bit
of sonic seasoning.

Again, high pitch, a bit like
the sweet soundscape,

but in this case,
very sharp music instead.

And that music track is, in fact,

I think the sourest music
known to humankind.

And finally, the chilli.

So quite spicy, mild?
Mild.

So now I'm going to fade in
the next track.

BASSY DANCE BEATS

CHERRY COUGHS

It definitely got spicier
and didn't taste very nice.

You'll notice that was
much higher in tempo,

much more energetic
piece of music.

Much in the same way that eating
a chilli may make you more aroused,

more alert, more energetic.

But knowing what the experiment
was about

could have influenced my reactions,

so we're setting up a second test...

Hello? Can you hear me?
Yeah.

..this time with ten guinea pigs

who have no idea
what they're about to experience.

We're giving each of them two
pieces of chocolate - A and B.

They have to tell us which
they think tastes sweeter.

I'm ready.

In fact, the chocolate is
exactly the same,

but we're going to play
different music as they try it.

First, a bitter track.

Let's go.

REPETITIVE DEEP STACCATO BEATS

OK, fading out.

Then one of Charles' sweet tracks.

LIGHT, GENTLE ORCHESTRAL TUNE

Please could you show us
which chocolate you think

was the sweeter chocolate?

Two tasters realised
the chocolate was the same.

B.

The other eight thought the second
chocolate tasted sweeter.

How will they react when
they find out we've tricked them?

They tasted really different.

I'm a bit surprised.
It's crazy.

They tasted so, like, different.

So a great result
from our experiment,

but does sonic seasoning have
a practical use?

So the future of this theory

is that it will influence what music
is played in restaurants.

We're seeing already in some cafes
in the Far East, in Beijing,

where the management are actually
deliberately using sweet sounds

all day long so that they can reduce
the sugar in their cakes and drinks,

hopefully keep the experience
of their customers equally sweet,

just the way they always like it,

but with a little bit less of
the unhealthy stuff in there.

So not only does sound contribute
to how we experience food,

but it also has the potential
to help us follow

a healthier lifestyle as well.

Back in Borehamwood,

our tasty filling has been maturing
for 24 hours,

and now we're one day, two hours,
and 21 minutes into production.

The sound of a factory hard at work
may not be ideal for eating pasta,

but it's music to Charlie's ears.

So, down here, Gregg,

this is my favourite part
of the factory.

We're on our way to savour
the secrets of pasta production.

This is the beginning of
our production line for raviolo.

So what we're seeing here, Gregg,
is the first stage,

where we're adding
the semolina flour.

Yeah. What is semolina?

It's flour made from durum wheat,
which is a different wheat strain

to what the normal white soft flour
would be that we generally use

for bread and other things
in the UK.

It has 30% more protein

than you would expect
in your standard flours.

When you mix flour and water, the
proteins within the flour combine

to form strands of gluten,
which turns it into dough.

The more protein you have,
the more strands are formed,

and the stronger your dough will be.

And the factory needs a strong dough
to withstand the rigorous processes

it puts it through to turn
it into raviolo.

You must go through
quite a few bags of semolina.

I mean, how many do you use
on this line?

So these are 25-kilo bags.

We run through about six bags
an hour.

What?!
Yeah.

So how many bags of semolina
is the factory going through?

Every week, approximately
3,000 bags of semolina.

As each bag is added,
the hopper vibrates,

sending the semolina through a sieve

before it's piped to the next stage
of production.

But to make fresh pasta dough,
there's another vital element.

So this is our egg tank, Gregg.

If we open it up
and have a quick look,

you can see inside we've got our
golden liquid egg ready for the mix.

The egg adds another protein element
to the dough,

which is really important
for the adhesion of the two sheets

of pasta when you're
sticking them together.

It adds a film over that really
does allow them to stick well.

Free-range eggs for making fresh
pasta come direct to the factory

in liquid form.

We've got ten kilos
of pasteurised golden egg here.

Isn't it ironic that
that top looks like a chicken?

IMITATES CHICKEN SQUAWKS

You know what? I've never noticed
that before. Have you not?

I like this. It's kind of
bringing me out of my shell!

Roughly per week, we'll go
through about 1,000 of those bags.

Oh! Wow.

How many kilos of eggs is that?

10,000 kilos of egg a week.

That's a whole flock of chickens
just for our eggs.

Does this yellow yolk also give
your pasta another golden hue? Yes.

We actually feed the chickens
marigold petals...

Get out of here! Yes.
Charlie, come on.

So what it does, Gregg,
the bright yellow petals,

they eat those, and their eggs
come out extra bright.

If you have a look,
you'll see that's a lot more yellow,

a lot more orange,
than you would expect.

Listen, son, look at me.
Is that true?

Absolutely. Is that absolutely true?
Absolutely true.

While egg is important
for making our fresh pasta,

the dried pasta we often use at home
is made by mixing just wheat

and water and then evaporating
the water to leave a pasta

that's 100% durum wheat.

A lot of people think that fresh
pasta is superior to dried pasta.

I just consider them as
two completely different products.

Absolutely.
Very different products.

So for me, dried pasta is there
to absorb really heavy, rich sauces.

If you're having a filled pasta,

you absolutely want it
to have egg in it.

It allows it to bind better
and creates a nicer texture

when you're actually biting through
the two layers.

56 kilos of liquid egg,
along with 350 kilos of semolina,

is pumped to a mixer
sitting above the production line.

So up here is where
everything comes together

and goes into our mixer.

Inside, metal paddles rotate
as the egg and semolina are dosed

to an accuracy of
0.5 grams per kilogram

before 70 litres of water is added
to combine the mix.

So this is our mix, right?
Yes.

But that's not a finished dough,
is it? No, not at all.

I have a little sample here
for us to have a look at.

That is nothing like a dough
you'd make at home. No.

For a start, it's much denser,
much heavier,

and it's also much drier.

If I had to mix and knead this by
hand, I'd have forearms like Popeye.

That's why you make it wetter
at home, generally.

It doesn't need that amount
of liquid

to get the gluten proteins to bond.

Ah!

We make it wetter at home because we
simply wouldn't be able to knead it

if it was that dense and strong.
Brilliant.

The dough drops out of the mixer
and travels through a specialist

machine which folds and kneads it
to make it stretchier.

Then it passes through a set of
rollers and emerges as two separate,

eight-millimetre thick,
continuous sheets.

There it is, our sheets of pasta.

All the things you would do
with your fingers

and the heel of your palm...
Absolutely.

..is happening inside that box.

It gets folded over 52 times
like you would do by hand,

just a lot more pressure
and a lot quicker.

You've got it coming out on the top
AND the bottom. Yes, we do.

I'm guessing you're going to
put them together

with the filling in the middle.

We put the filling in between and
adhere them together. Brilliant.

I can't believe how thick
that is, though, mate.

I mean, right now that looks
like underlay!

If you try and turn it
straight into a really thin sheet,

you're going to end up
with little holes

or just thinner
and thicker sections.

It goes through a thinning section,

through these two thick
steel rollers,

that take it from 8mm
to about 3mm, then down to 0.6.

While Charlie's pasta know-how
is impressive,

the techniques they use here

were honed in the home of
pasta-making itself, Italy.

And this knowledge has been passed
down through Charlie's family

for generations.

You make so many pastas here?

Do you know when it started?
What's the history?

So, many years ago,
my great-grandfather, Luigi,

left his home in Italy when he was
14 years old to come to the UK.

He came over for finishing school,

finished his education,
and then stayed in the UK

working at a deli
to make a bit of money.

So that's actually how the company
started officially in 1929,

in Gerrard Street
in what is now Soho.

So, Gregg, this is
my great-great-aunt

making spaghetti back in
the early '30s.

It was something that we did
in the window of the deli

so that everyone walking by
could see,

have a bit of interaction
with the public.

Charlie, do you feel a link with
Luigi, your great-great-grandfather?

Do you feel you're carrying on
the tradition? Absolutely.

Whilst I don't feel the same, Gregg,
I was not born in Italy,

I was born in the UK,
I'm a British man.

However, I feel very intricately
linked to the history

that we have as a family,
particularly around pasta

and cuisine and Italian food
in the UK.

That's fantastic.
Mate, what a heritage!

We know that migrants from Italy
have made a wonderful contribution

to the British diet.

What would we do without pasta
and pizza?

But Ruth's been discovering
the lesser-known story

of how Italians helped to build
modern Britain, literally.

Many places in the UK
have thriving Italian communities.

Ciao.
Hello!

Can I have a double espresso,
please? Course you can.

And the influence
of those sunny shores

is evident on most high streets.

But there's a contender
for the title

of Britain's most Italian town

that might come as a bit
of a surprise.

Benvenuto a Bedford.

To find out more about this
little Italy in the east of England,

where one in five people
have Italian roots,

I'm meeting historian Lydia Saul.

ITALIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM PLAYS

Hello!
Hello. Welcome to Bedford.

So why does Bedford have
such a large Italian community?

Well, Ruth, it's all about this.

A brick?
A brick, yes.

A London brick,
as it is embossed on it.

And it was made
by London Brick Company,

a large brickworks
based in Bedfordshire.

And they made millions of
these bricks.

The Stewartby Brickworks,
built in 1926,

was the centre of the UK's
brick-making industry

for over half a century.

Located just a few miles
south of Bedford,

it took advantage of
huge clay deposits

laid down over 150 million years
ago, perfect for making bricks.

So we've got some pictures here
of the brickworks itself.

Look at all those chimneys!
Yes.

You really start to see the scale
of it, don't you, here,

in these images?
Yes.

At its height, it was making
18 million bricks a week.

A week?!
A week.

And 20% of all of the bricks
that were being used to make houses

were coming from Bedfordshire.

For the whole of Britain?
For the whole of Britain.

So there was this big rebuilding
of Britain after the war,

and of course, in order to do that,
they needed manpower.

That's where the Italians
got involved.

So this is part, I suppose,
of a wider policy of

looking all over the world for
assistance to help rebuild Britain.

So why was it Italy in particular
that the brickworks were looking?

They were actually struggling
with unemployment, particularly

in the southern part of Italy,
where there was lots of rural farms.

So offices were set up in Naples,

and people would come from
the surrounding areas

looking for four-year contracts
to work in the London Brick Company,

making the bricks here in the UK.

So how many people
are we talking about?

Well, by 1960,
over about eight years,

there was now 7,500 Italians
working in the brickworks

in Bedfordshire.

A huge number considering
the population of Bedford then

was just 60,000.

To find out what life was like
for those early arrivals,

I'm meeting Liberato Albanese.

DOORBELL RINGS

Hello. Hello!
I'm glad you made it!

Come in, come in, come in.

He came to the works as
a brick-maker in 1953...

..and his friend,
Salvatore Garganese...

Hello. I'm Salvatore.
Salvatore. Or Sav for short.

..whose family joined his father
here in 1960.

Oh, look at these.
Is this your family?

Yeah, it's all my family here.

I am on top there, myself.

As a young man.
Yeah.

That one over there, all of these,
my brothers on top of there.

I was 17.

So why did you come to Britain
in the first place at 17 years old?

We are very poor people.
Yeah.

We work on a farm, and we work
with the cows, with the sheep.

No money there.

How old were you, Salvatore,
when you arrived?

I was ten years old.

What was it like for you as a
ten-year-old coming to Britain?

My first impression
when I came here - oh, my gosh!

School dinners.

RUTH LAUGHS

The sort of food that was used to
the English school dinners they did,

it just didn't go with me.

There are now more than
14,000 people in Bedford

descended from that first generation
of arrivals.

This footage of Italian men
in the brickworks

was shot in the 1950s.

That's it.
That's what my dad used to do.

They used to do it by hand.

My dad had the Lambretta.

Looking at that guy
on that Lambretta,

I wouldn't be surprised
if that was him.

And this is obviously, they probably
just finished their day's work.

Now we're going to fetch money now.

FILM: Plenty of work means
plenty of money.

Money to send home to their family
in Italy...

Yeah. That's true.

So what was the work like
at the brickyards?

Well, to me, myself was all right,

because I had a good job.

But the other people -
very, very hard.

They certainly did their fair share
for this town.

Made life a lot easier
for my generation,

and obviously we're making it a bit
better for the next generation.

The last of Bedford's brickworks
closed in 2008...

..but the thriving
Italian community remains.

And whilst they're running
very different businesses,

they're a lasting reminder
of how our European cousins

helped to rebuild Britain.

44 miles from Bedford,
at the factory in Borehamwood,

the recipe they use
to make their pasta

owes a lot to that Italian heritage.

With the semolina, eggs, and water
kneaded and rolled,

my two sheets of pasta

are travelling along
the production line.

Now it's time to add
our fishy filling.

OK, so here is where our filling
from earlier,

your filling batch, is going in.

What weight of filling do you have
for every raviolo?

So every raviolo has approximately
15g of filling inside. Right.

And every hour, we go through about
two of the batches we made earlier,

which is about 250 kilos
of filling an hour. Wow.

So this pump will now pump our
filling into the production line

and join the pasta from earlier.

It's raviolo time.

The two pasta sheets enter
a stuffed pasta forming machine,

and my crab and crayfish filling
is pumped in to meet them.

Well, that, my friend,
is a lovely sight.

Absolutely.
There we have filled raviolo.

So what happens here,
we get our two sheets from before,

they're getting thinned down
to 0.6 millimetres per sheet.

Those two sheets come in a V-shape
together, and we have that filling,

it's gone through that pump,
coming to a set of spines.

Those spines go up and down
and actually inject a small quantity

of filling in between those two
sheets, at the correct position,

for multiple passes.

With the filling in the middle,

the two pasta sheets are rolled
through steel moulds,

which press them together,
cutting out the parcel shapes.

I'm not very good at filled pasta
at home, I must admit.

But you often water the edge
to make it stick. Do you do that?

We don't. In the way that
we've created that lovely rich

egg protein in the mix before,
the adhesion is ready,

as long as we apply enough pressure.

And it looks like little fork marks
around the edge.

You're making it look home-made.
Exactly.

And that's the whole point,
is to try and simulate what you do

at home, Gregg, and also that each
parcel is ever so slightly different

to give you that more artisanal
feel. Rustica!

You're making it look rustic.
You clever boy!

Oh, I do like that.

How fast are you making these?

We make 280 a minute, approximately.

As the parcels are filled
and formed,

any excess pasta is reworked
back into the start

of the pasta-making process.

Then hundreds of stuffed raviolo
travel along a conveyor

and into an intriguing looking
tunnel.

OK, so, Gregg,
here we have the next stage,

which is pasteurisation.

Pasta-isation!

Pasta-isation.

Inside the tunnel,
the parcels are sprayed with steam

that heats the core
to 85 degrees Celsius

and partially cooks them,
a process known as pasteurisation.

There are two major reasons
why we pasteurise pasta.

So firstly, it's to kill microbial
activity inside the filling

and on the pastry itself.

We now have pasta
that lasts for about four weeks,

whereas obviously it would be about
one or two days

before pasteurisation existed.

So we've got to kill that microbial
activity so that when we then

pack the product,
there's no risk of anything growing

over those four weeks of life.

It's safe, this pasteurisation,

but it also gives you
a bigger shelf life. Indeed.

Without putting any chemicals in,
any preservatives. Absolutely.

However, there is another
very important reason.

The gluten bonds that we created
while kneading

still don't make the pasta
strong enough for all the travel

and all of the processing
that it's going to go through.

We can actually see one of the
parcels we've just made.

It's filled, it's sealed,
it's formed,

but it's weak. You stretch it a bit

and you're going to damage the
pasta. It's going to fall apart.

That's now ruined.

So we need to do something
to protect it

and increase its strength.

So the pasteurisation process
actually seals the outside

of the pasta to ensure, number one,
that no filling seeps out,

but also that it lasts.

As the parcels travel
through the tunnel,

starch particles in the pasta flour
absorb water from the steam,

causing them to form a gel.

This gelatinisation sets
the gluten strands within the dough,

holding them in place
and stabilising the pasta's shape.

So this pasteurisation tunnel,
Gregg, goes on for 15 metres.

It's not warm. Oh, it is a little
bit. On the outside, it's insulated,

but there's 95 degree-plus steam
inside there.

Well, you can feel the heat.
Absolutely.

And you can see the amount
of moisture now

on the outside of that.

They almost look partly cooked.

They're getting that kind of
wrinkly texture. Exactly.

They're starting to partially cook.

So we have achieved
core pasteurisation temperature.

So if I grab a piece
off of the belt here...

Caldo?
Caldo. Molto caldo.

So you can see it's much stronger.

It doesn't fall apart
like it did before. Ah.

However, there is a problem,

which is how sticky it is, Gregg.

So what I'll do -
I'll do that and you'll see...

Can I have a go next?
Please, please... Of course.

..can I have a go?
Please, please!

Please. So if you grab one
off the belt. Ow! Ow, ow!

It is hot. Be careful.

And it sticks!

GREGG SCREAMS, LAUGHS

Wahey!
There we go.

See? That sticks.
And that is a problem.

GREGG LAUGHS

It is. It's exactly like
you'd do with spaghetti.

The flick on the ceiling thing
is a real test.

I've never flung spaghetti
in me life.

You've got to.
It's the real way to check.

I know that starch
has gelatinised now.

So that is now starch gelatinised,
pasteurisation complete,

but it's now too sticky to go round
the rest of the line.

So what do you have to do?

So what we do is we send it back
underneath the pasteurisation tunnel

and it comes back to us,

going through a drying section
of about 50 degrees,

really dry heat.
All of the moisture is removed,

and we can see that if we grab
one of these parcels here,

there's almost no moisture on that,
and you can actually feel it.

It's much less sticky than it was

coming out of that
pasteurisation tunnel.

Give it a flick at the wall.

It doesn't stick any more.
We know it's dry.

It's ready to be processed.

This may be the most fun
I've ever had in a factory.

What I like about this procedure,
even though it's on a big scale,

it always looks like dinner
all the way through.

It just looks like cooking.

My dry raviolo are transported
by a revolving travelator

into a chiller where they're held
for 25 minutes.

Inside, the parcels'
core temperature drops

to below four degrees Celsius,

helping to solidify
the gelatinised starch

and set the pasta shape permanently.

Gluten is vital for binding
our pasta dough together,

but it's estimated that 8% of the
UK is intolerant or allergic to it.

Ruth's been discovering
the surprising way

that gluten-free products
first hit our shelves.

Nowadays, there's a huge range
of gluten-free food,

from pasta

to cakes and bread.

The products available today look
much like their wheat counterparts,

but it wasn't always that way.

I'm in Bolton to meet Chris Hook,

a pioneer in bringing
gluten-free food to our shelves.

Hello, Chris. Ruth, good to meet
you. Good to meet you, too.

We've all heard of
a gluten-free diet these days,

but when did we first start
to realise

that gluten was a health issue?

It goes back, really, to the 19th
century, when there was an awareness

that some of the children
were not thriving.

What do we mean by "not thriving"?

There's no growth.
Feeling very lethargic.

Literally 30% of children
with the problem didn't survive.

I mean, that's...that's quite
staggering, isn't it?

But what it actually was,
people were unclear.

This illness, called coeliac
disease, was first linked to diet

by British doctor Samuel Gee
in 1887,

but he wasn't able to establish
what food was causing the condition.

Then, during World War II, severe
hunger caused by the Nazi occupation

of the Netherlands
prompted a paediatrician

to make an important breakthrough.

So in 1944-45,
there was a Nazi blockade.

There was no bread getting through.

And there was a children's doctor
called Dr Willem Dicke.

He had a ward of children
with coeliac disease.

So, Ruth, you can see from these
photographs,

clearly going hungry
during the famine. Yeah.

And because they couldn't
give them any bread,

and they started giving them
other products to eat,

they suddenly found that
they started to thrive

and they actually felt a lot better.

And he then realised that it was
the gluten in the wheat

that was causing the problem.

What does gluten do to a body
of someone with coeliac disease?

There's a protein within gluten,
gliadin, that is triggering off

this antibody, and that attacks
the gut lining.

In a coeliac, if it goes untreated,

the consequence of that is that,
from a nutritional perspective,

everything just flows through.
So you're not absorbing...

You can't absorb any goodness from
the rest of your food. Precisely.

So you might be eating as much,
huge amounts, and basically

you're starving because
it's just passing through. Yeah.

That's true. So is there a
difference, then, between coeliac

and gluten intolerant?
Oh, yeah.

A lot of people who feel they have
a gluten intolerance

can moderate their intake
of gluten and feel OK.

The big difference is,

you can feel unwell,
but it's not life-threatening.

It's not as acute
as coeliac disease.

Gluten is found in grains
like wheat and barley,

used to make many
of our everyday foods.

The challenge was to find
alternatives for those who needed

to exclude it from their diet,

and the first gluten-free product
to emerge in Britain was bread.

At bakery company Warburtons, Chris
oversees their gluten-free range.

So the early '60s,
there was a small company

producing gluten-free bread, and it
actually came in a tin. In a tin?

Can you believe it? In a tin.
Tinned bread! Sealed in a tin, yeah.

And that was the only gluten-free
bread that was available for anybody

who was diagnosed with
coeliac disease.

They were available on prescription.

As a coeliac, you just cannot
nip down to the local bakers.

Gluten-free bread relied
on wheat alternatives

like rice and tapioca flour.

And this was steamed in tins,
very much like a pudding.

So is this very different

from how we make
gluten-free bread today?

Oh, very different. We actually
managed to achieve a dough,

a gluten-free dough.

We're also using slightly
different ingredients.

So, for example, we're using
psyllium... What's that?

..which is a fibre bulking agent.

A lot of the food technologists
and innovation guys that work on

our products say it's more like
chemistry than traditional baking.

The moment of truth.

So this is the 1960s
coeliac experience.

Shall we see, Ruth?
Do you want to press it out?

Oh, yeah. There it goes.

And then...

Yeah. Keep going, keep going.
Whoa! There you go.

Tinned bread.
What do you think of that, Ruth?

So do we just slice it and eat
it like bread?

We... We could do that, but the
majority of people toast it

before you eat it. It just makes it
a little bit more pleasant.

In comparison to modern
gluten-free bread,

this is... Well, it's a different
beast, isn't it?

Yeah. I mean, talk about retro.

I mean, this is just lightyears away
from where we are now.

It wasn't until the 1980s
that new gluten-free products

like pasta were also made available
on prescription,

and another decade before they
started appearing in grocery shops,

setting the bar for a host
of modern day options

available in supermarkets today.

I'm just so proud of
where it's come to,

because it's been a long journey,

and I think there's a lot more
we can do.

And it all begins with a tin.
Doesn't it just?

Back at the factory,

they also make their own range
of gluten-free pasta,

but my gluten option,
stuffed with crab and crayfish,

is still one of the most popular.

It's been filled, pasteurised,
and cooled.

Now my parcels are sent
from the fridges,

along conveyors, to packing...

..where I'm meeting Sheila Isnard.

Sheila, hello.
Hello, Gregg.

You've got some great
bits of machinery in here.

Oh, I do indeed.

Tell me about the packing process.
OK.

So above us we have
a multihead weigher,

also known as
a combination of scales.

So a multihead weigher
will receive all our raviolo

from the cooling system.

It will vibrate and gently spread
our raviolo across the 14 heads.

Each head has an individual scale

that will then weigh the raviolo
and dispense the right portion.

Once portioned, the raviolos
slide down a 1.5 metre chute

into cardboard containers.

So how many individual raviolo
do we get in the box?

We get on average ten raviolos,

but it's two portions.

How many portions of raviolo
are you making a day?

A lot, Gregg.

So per day, we produce
140,000 portions,

and that is 1.4 million
of individual filled raviolo.

There aren't that many red and white
checked tablecloths in Britain.

The carefully weighed portions then
head towards a flow wrap packing

machine, which covers the trays
with protective polyethylene

packaging while injecting a mix
of carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

This gas flushing is what we get
in virtually every bag of salad.

Correct.
That's the same thing.

Exactly the same thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

By introducing nitrogen
into the packaging,

it lowers oxygen levels inside.

Without oxygen,
bacteria is unable to grow,

and the pasta stays fresher
for longer,

while carbon dioxide helps
inhibit bacterial growth.

Having already been pasteurised,

it's an extra protection
against contamination,

and, once refrigerated,
it gives a pretty decent shelf life.

So our raviolo can be fresh
for up to 30 days.

Wow!

That's amazing, isn't it?
It's fantastic.

You can get a fresh filled pasta
on a shelf for almost a month. Yes.

So once it's weighed, sorted,
packed, gas flushed...

Yeah?
..where does it then go?

Then our raviolo is ready
for dispatch.

And that's where I've got to go.
Fist bump. Thank you.

Once the raviolo are packed,
they don't stick around for long.

They pass through a massive
warehouse capable of storing

enough raviolo for two million
dinners...

..before heading to Cesar
at dispatch.

Hello, my friend.

How many pallets on each truck?

A typical one is 26 pallets
in each truck.

That's a fair old weight of pasta.

How many trucks are leaving here
every week?

With all different pasta types
that we have, around 80.

Really?
Yes.

From this one factory... Yes.
..you send out 80 trucks of pasta?

Yes, yes.

Wow.

So out of those 80 trucks
that leave here,

how many of those trucks
would you say is the raviolo?

The crab and crayfish raviolo,
we would fill a couple of them,

two of them a week.
So how much is that, then?

Over 250,000 individual parcels.

It would be around 52,000 portions.

How do you explain
the British love of pasta?

I think it is convenient to cook,

but it's also the combination
of ingredients that people get,

and the flavour. Of all the pastas,
why is that one the best seller?

People do look to get pasta
to a restaurant level, I think.

You're proud of that, aren't you?
Of course.

That's it, right?
Yeah. Loaded, ready to go.

That was a fascinating process.
You know that?

Do you like to cook pasta at home?
I do.

One day, five hours, and 16 minutes
after the start of production...

..my fresh crab and crayfish raviolo
are heading to shops - and bellies -

the length and breadth of the UK...

..with the people of Liverpool

putting away the most amount
of pasta.

Stuffed pasta looks like
a really simple dish,

but actually there is
precision and skill

that goes into making
every little pasta parcel.

Personally, I'll always be grateful
to the Italians

that brought their wonderful food
to these islands in the first place.

The factory has come a long way
from its first early assembly lines,

but how do we get from there
to here?

Explore the history and the future
of the factory

on an interactive timeline.

Go to...

..and follow the links
to the Open University.