Bread Factory Tour
So, this isn’t a dish or recipe review, but we recently had a food adventure so lovely it would be a shame not to share it…
I love Unwrapped. Watching one (or two) episodes before bedtime has become nearly a ritual. There are some wonderful subtleties of the show that are quite amusing, but the very best part for me is the factory footage. I hate the episodes when they feature a candy collector or some burger festival in Ohio. Those segments are usually tangental and unnecessary. What I want to see is conveyor belts of food, 30 foot long ovens, and gallon-sized batches of boiling high fructose corn syrup. Sublime. Following this love of the food factories, I decided that we really needed to visit one. Luckily, history is on my side. In 1908, Mrs. Baird’s Bread was founded in Ft. Worth by Ninnie Baird.
Their Ft. Worth factory (now one of several) offers complimentary tours on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. It’s open to the public (not just organizations and schools as I might have guessed). You just have to plan ahead (two-week notice required) and fill out a little paperwork.
The greatness that’s inside is totally worth the effort. The little video they show in the beginning of the tour is (obviously) juvenile, but I know twenty-somethings aren’t really the bread tour’s target market. After the video, you receive your hard hat with built-in headset and enter the factory. You really get to see everything and get a close view of dough being kneaded in large troughs, rolling through a gigantic oven, cooling on rolling racks, and being sliced. The day we visited they were baking whole wheat bread and hamburger buns for Wendy’s. (This development was a big surprise—the factory makes baked goods for lots of other companies too. Chili’s, Oroweat, and even some store brands were among the companies our guide listed.)
The tour concluded with some good old fashioned carbo-loading and we got to eat the just baked bread and hamburger buns. Great experience and I think it’d be especially fun for kids. It’s like Unwrapped, but for real!
These are all the great things we got in our gift bag. Everyone loves stickers!
Mrs. Baird’s Bread
7301 South Freeway | Ft. Worth, TX 76134
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lucky, there used to be a Mrs. Bairds off of 75 near Mocking Bird some years back. When it was open and the wind was blowing right, you could smell bread all the way down at Mockingbird and Greenville. I missed that smell. So… did the whole factory smell that good??? Well, I have to disagree that it was just like Unwrapped, you didnt put one bad pun in that post. You know, “Well if you dont want to spend alot of dough, you can get a rise out of your day and stop loafing around, and hey! you dont even knead alot of time for the tour” Put a few of those in there and there ya go.
1. yes, the inside of the factory smelled wonderful.
2. brilliant. you captured the marc summers voice perfectly
I’ve heard great things about this tour. I can’t wait to partake in it when I visit!
When I was marathon training, my daily route went by a Mrs. Baird’s fried pie factory. Totally masochistic.
My gift bag better still be waiting for me in Dallas… I want those stickers bad. Mrs. Baird’s Hunger Force!
this warms my heart, almost as much as a dinner roll fresh out of the oven