Booooooooo!

[TheDeeDon]

I cannot speak for the bakers you list but I do know that retail bakers don't do hygiene too well in my experience.
Butchers oddly, seem to have adapted better though there are always the exceptions.

I suppose flour and liquids are a baker's nemesis.
They can set hard quite quickly.

When I was a young apprentice baker, the hygiene was most certainly lax. By the time I gave it up 10 years later it had fairly changed.

A good few of the bakeries I listed gave it up as they couldn't be arsed adapting to the new regulations, some of them just never had the space to carry out the changes. Some of them as basic as giving the bakers a toilet to use, instead of having to go outside to use one or hud it in.

The thing is with flour is that you can never stop it lying about.

[TheDeeDon]

Hygiene?
Ok up to a point, no one wants a cockroach in their pie.
But hygiene inspectors would be happy if nothing ever had any taste as long as the flour and floor were bleached properly.

As a country, we deserve supermarket bakeries.

You do know most of the rules regarding hygiene came off the back of EU legislation?

The industry died due to big bakeries making everything with machines at rock bottom prices, forcing the skilled baker leave the industry.

I know two lads who are still Bakers from my days in the bakery, they both own bakeries, but most of us gave it up as you could make more money stacking shelves in a shop and worked better hours.

[donsdaft]

Sad but inevitable I suppose.
I can't imagine a rush of our youngsters prepared to work nights.

[Donanddusted]

The thing is with flour is that you can never stop it lying about.

Very true.

It's the months old dough stuck to equipment and surfaces that isn't so good.

Icing and caramel is a bugger too.

[donsdaft]

You should have seen optical labs back in the seventies.

[Donanddusted]

You do know most of the rules regarding hygiene came off the back of EU legislation?

The ironic thing is that the UK was the driving force for the actual rules in the legislation.

[TheDeeDon]

Sad but inevitable I suppose.
I can't imagine a rush of our youngsters prepared to work nights.

One of the reasons I jacked it was working nights, hated it with a passion. Midweek games at Pittodrie and go straight to work after a game or up at stupid o'clock. Heading over Market Street for a 2am start on a Sunday morning and your mates were heading home after a night on the town, that was always a hard one. The job of a baker was enjoyable enough, but the pay and working hours were terrible.

[TheDeeDon]

The ironic thing is that the UK was the driving force for the actual rules in the legislation.

I haven't got an issue with the rules I think overall they are/were a force of good, they inspectors never really bothered you much unless something was really bad and a place I worked at was really bad and made the papers. That was a grim time.

Are/were you a baker yourself?

[Donanddusted]

I am one of the barstewards in white.