Of cakes, cookies, donuts and bread

NAGPUR: Noticing the gaint hoarding of Butibori MIDC, Std VI student Ansh Dhopte of Centre Point School (Bypass) asked why is a bakery situated among factories as the bus entered the zone off Wardha Road on Sunday afternoon. As around 40 Nagpur For Kids (NFK) members started their tour of Ajit Bakery’s manufacturing unit a shortwhile later, the children started getting answers to the question raised by Dhopte.
“The unit roughly manufactures around 25,000 bread packs and 12,000 donut sachets. Besides this, other bakery products like khari, coconut cookies, bar cakes are also baked here. The bread comes in different sizes of 100 gms, 300gms, 400gms, 600gms, and 800gms. There are around 150 workers employed here,” factory manager Ganesh Thakre told NKF members.
When kids asked why other popular bakeries of the city do not have a factory, Thakre said Ajit’s products have a huge demand which can’t be met with a small facility along the outlet as is the case with others.
The products are sold across the state and also in parts of Madhya Pradesh.
Quality control manager Paramjeet Singh explained the students how the raw material such as ‘maida’ is turned into bread, donuts, cakes etc
“Two types of spiral mixers are used to make the dough. High speed machine is used for donuts while low speed is required for bread. At a time, it processes 60kg dough. Later, this dough is passed from mixers to another machine for it to swell,” Singh said, while taking the kids through the donut and cake section.
Explaining about the khari, he said the dough is folded 27 times and then laminated with dalda. “After this, it is kept in the cold room for about 2 hours before it is cut,” he said.
Bakery owner Ajit Divadkar too was present during the session and informed kids how a bread is made.
At the end of the tour, the factory officials treated NKF kids and volunteers with freshly baked donuts and bar cakes. One of the kids was quick to get into barter mode when he requested the factory staff if he could exchange the cake sachet for cookies. To this, Thakre promptly asked his staff to fulfull the kid’s wish.
Sharing her experienced with Thakre, a girl member said she was mesmerized to she the urgency with which the staff at the packaging unit worked. “Next time I eat a bread, I will know how much efforts go into bringing it to my table,” she said.