There’s a heady whiff of mincemeat in the air and an ear-deafening clank every couple of seconds as pastry lids are pushed down with a metal mould. Vast ranks of pies then get a swift dusting of sugar and disappear into the oven for a precise nine minutes.
This is the world’s largest mince pie factory, and production is now in full swing, with 720 mince pies a minute rolling off each of the three production lines. When all three lines are in operation – which they will be until 19 December – about 2.3m pies are turned out every 24 hours.
The 8-hectare (20-acre) factory site in Barnsley, Yorkshire, is run by Mr Kipling, which is part of the Premier Foods group. The plant makes mince pies and other cakes for its own-brand label and for the UK’s major supermarkets and retailers. .
The factory makes cakes 24/7 throughout the year, and usually employs 850 workers. However, the demand for festive pies means 300 extra staff are brought in for the run-up to Christmas.
The factory’s manager, Simon Wood, is on hand to scrutinise the process, which is tweaked and refined for each customer according to their demands. This year Wood and his technical staff have been asked by Asda to close the notorious mince pie “air gap” – the space between filling and lid which means the whole pie collapses at first bite. The gap, explains Wood, is the result of the pie’s lid rising in the oven – and the supermarket chain wants rid of it.
“Asda told us consumers were not always happy about this so we have been trying to come up with a solution and we have perfected it for the new range of Asda Extra Special mince pies,” said Wood.
“We are filling the pies with as much mincemeat as possible – 29g per pie – and using a new technical process that pushes the lid down very hard on to the filling, keeping it flat. It’s a matter of getting the balance right as you don’t want it to crack. When there’s a high butter content it makes the pastry more brittle.”
Premier Foods has tinkered with its own pies too, after feedback from pie fans. This year they have feather-like markings around the top as if they have been finished off by hand with a fork, and are dusted with a light sprinkling of sugar.
The line of pies – 15 wide – passes through seven “zones” in the 45-metre-long (147ft) oven, taking nine minutes to cook to a very pale brown finish.
Wood says the entire process is like a vast, mechanised version of home baking. Pastry is made in gigantic mixers on the floor above and then piped down into machines below which push it out in pre-measured pellets. These are then pushed down to line the individual foil trays.
The mincemeat is also made on site. About 7,000 tonnes of sultanas, raisins and currants are shipped in each year to fill the pies. The mixture is left for at least 48 hours in large drums called cots to allow the spices to be absorbed. Different recipes – all top-secret and with varying amounts of alcohol – are used for rival retailers, and the pies are all packed and labelled on site before being dispatched.
The factory does make other cakes – today it is whipping up chocolate fudge logs for Sainsbury’s – but mince pies are the main event and the factory will bake about 180m of them this year, a record, to meet demand. Six out of every 10 households in the UK will buy them and there is a growing export market, led by Australia.
“It is an absolutely key time for us,” said Wood. “But I have to say, by Christmas I have had enough of mince pies.”
