Unwrapped 2.0 (2015) s03e10 Episode Script

Little Bits

On this episode of "Unwrapped 2.
0", we find big flavor in these little bits.
From a decadent deep-fried dessert that will make your mouth water to a sticky gumball that will take you back to your childhood and how about tiny baking chips you'll want to eat right out of the bag? Or little cookies crackling with buttery goodness? These goodies are proof big flavors can come in little bits.
When I was a kid, there was nothing better than walking downstairs and seeing a plateful of doughnuts for breakfast.
But my favorites were the bite-sized ones that I could eat on my way out the door.
And no one makes a poppable doughnut like the folks at Duchess.
Their chocolate gem doughnuts have been shining on grocery-store shelves since the 1940s.
There's just something that is special about them for kind of every generation.
Children love them, and they kind of bring back childhood memories for adults.
When creator Vernon Scarborough started to dabble in desserts, he wanted a brand name that would match his products perfectly.
He came up with the name Duchess because he thought it represented quality and something special.
At Duchess, that special something starts with a giant A combination of sugar, flour, and water are added to the mixer before they add their super-secret doughnut pre-mix.
That gives the doughnut all of its flavor.
is gradually sifted into the mixer, and then the batch is rolled over to the mixing paddles.
The ingredients mix for three minutes at varying speeds before resting in the bowl for 12 minutes.
That allows the leavening to start reacting and the flour to hydrate.
Once the dough has properly rested, it's poured into a tray that gravity-feeds the batch into a hopper above the fryer.
Rotor heads spin, pushing the dough down the tube before a cutter deposits perfect doughnut circles into the boiling-hot oil below.
The aroma in the fryer room is just so intense and sweet.
It smells like you've walked into a local bakery.
The little doughnut bits fry for just over one minute in the scorching-hot They're dropped in between what we call flight bars that hold the doughnuts in place as they journey along through the fryer until they make it to the turner, which actually turns the doughnuts over so that they get cooked on both sides.
When the doughnuts exit the fryer, they're golden-brown, delicious, and piping-hot.
They go down a conveyer system and on what we call a spiral conveyer to be cooled.
The warm, fresh doughnuts climb up the spiral conveyer for 30 minutes until they're cool enough to add a delicious coating of milk chocolate.
In fact, Duchess makes 45,000 pounds of liquid milk chocolate from scratch every week.
And that delicious velvety taste is a closely guarded trade secret.
That is our own special recipe.
That decadent chocolate meets its doughy partner at the enrobing machine, which basically drizzles every doughnut with warm, gooey milk chocolate.
If it were up to me, I'd slide everything I eat under this chocolate waterfall.
As the chocolate doughnuts leave the enrober, they run under a series of fans that gently blow off any excess liquid chocolate.
Then these mini doughnuts travel on a conveyer to the cooling tunnel.
Inside this chilly tunnel, the chocolate coating hardens over 21/2 minutes.
When they emerge, the luscious doughnuts are cool to the touch and ready for packaging.
A vibrating conveyer belt moves the doughnuts into single-file lines as they prep to go into the classic Duchess six-pack wrappers.
When you pick them up, you can actually feel that they're still a little bit warm and really fresh.
Some even argue that they're better in the store, and that's because a lot of care has gone into the selection of the ingredients and the packaging.
We make sure that we're sealing in freshness.
And that freshness lasts all the way to the moment when you tear open a pack and take a bite of that moist and delicious doughnut.
Milk, please.
Coming up, learn why it takes four days to make this small, sticky-sweet treat.
And later, find out how many rollers it takes to squeeze over 2 million pounds of butter into these delicious little bits.
You want to know my favorite way to grab a little treat? Sticking a quarter inside the slot, turning the knob, and boom! A chewy, fruity gumball.
At the Ford Gum & Machine Company, their classic carousel gumballs have been a staple for children and adults alike since 1917.
Gumballs remind people of that traditional time.
It brings back memories of their youth.
Nearly 100 years later, they continue to craft each gumball with just as much care.
There's a lot of science, if you will.
It takes us three to four days to make a gumball.
They begin by loading in scraps of gumballs from their forming lines.
If a gumball doesn't meet their high-quality standards, it's brought right back to add to a fresh batch.
Then gum base is added to the mix for a smooth and elastic texture.
Finally, 720 pounds of sugar, and softeners finish the batch.
Each mix is approximately 1,000 pounds.
When the gum is mixing, it has this beige appearance to it because there's been no color added at this point.
And this gum has a ways to go before it gets its bright color.
It's carted to an extruder, where two kneading rollers manipulate the gum, softening it before forming it into long, rectangular blocks.
Then the blocks ride the conveyer belt up to a machine that forms it into a rope.
Well, it's actually more like a hose hollow on the inside.
And it's just as sticky as if you were chewing it.
So it needs a little something to keep it from sticking to the machines.
We need a processing aid to help us.
And we apply talc to the outside of that rope.
Layered with a touch of edible talc powder, the gum is fed into one of three forming stations.
Each slab is cut into one of 18 pieces that then drop into the former.
The forming roll uses centrifugal force to spin each piece of gum into a hollow before depositing it onto a cooling table.
Didn't you always wonder how they turned gum into gumballs? Wow! The shimmying of the table itself allows that ball not only to cool but maintain its circular, spherical shape.
At this point, the gumballs are pretty cool, but they're still not cool enough.
They take a 50-foot ride over to a cooling tunnel.
Inside the cooling tunnel, a perforated cylinder spins the gumballs while blowing 55-degree air into the chamber.
It's spinning very slowly not only to maintain the round shape, but also to help move the air through the chamber.
The gumballs tumble for 15 seconds in the chamber before being loaded into large trays that hold 30 pounds of gumballs.
Next, the trays are transferred to a curing room where the gumballs will sit for 24 hours.
The curing room is approximately The cool, dry air helps remove any of the residual moisture from the piece.
Now it's time to form the hard candy shell that gives each gumball its color and flavor.
First, they add into coating pans.
As the gumballs turn, they're coated in a mix of sugar, color, and flavoring.
The process is cumulative in that the materials are added slowly over time.
And that process takes about an hour.
Let's see That's a lot of gum.
Ford gumballs have been made in over 250 flavors, including grape, cherry, orange, and lemon-lime.
And they've taken a few chances over the years.
The oddest flavor we've ever produced was fried chicken.
A fried-chicken gumball? I'll pass.
Once the gumballs get their pre-coat, they take another 24-hour rest in the curing room before receiving a final coat.
The finished coat adds the remaining coloring, the remaining flavoring, and the polish to bring the shine out from each piece.
the finished gumballs are placed into 32-pound tubs and brought to the mixing area.
Here, gravity is used to mingle all the flavors as they drop onto a conveyer belt that's headed to packaging.
In total throughout the year, we manufacture And no matter what flavor you're lucky enough to get, when you put your quarter in and turn the dial, every little gumball is sure to be a ton of fun.
Coming up, find out how many layers of dough it takes to create this little cookie treat.
And later, see how these little bits get their curly top.
The best part of a good party? The dessert table.
If there's a plateful of cookies, hmm, it's not full for long when I'm around.
When it comes to finding a decadent cookie that's a little slice of heaven, look no further than Petite Palmiers from Sugar Bowl Bakery.
The cookie's flaky and buttery and melts in your mouth.
Petite Palmiers are classic French cookies, a sweet, crispy treat that's been around for more than 100 years.
It's lightly sweetened but extra buttery.
The secret to that amazing taste? Lots of layers and lots of butter.
To make all those flaky layers, the folks at Sugar Bowl start out by placing butter, dough trimmings, water, and flour into a gigantic stand mixer.
It's like what you'd use in your kitchen for cookie dough, except each batch weighs 600 pounds.
The ingredients are mixed for four to five minutes until a light and flaky dough is created.
After it's done mixing, a hydraulic lift will lift the bowl.
And then our workers will transfer the dough from the mix bowl onto the conveyer.
When the dough ball emerges, it travels up a conveyer to the top of the extruder.
A hopper feeds the dough into the extruder, where it's squeezed into a continuous one-inch sheet.
But this dough still needs its creamy partner.
We use about 2.
5 million pounds of butter a year.
That's what I'm talking about.
All 2.
5 million pounds of sweet, creamy butter is cut into 55-pound blocks and fed into a press that lays a 12-inch-wide sheet on top of the dough.
Now comes the trick.
Filled with buttery goodness, the outer layers of the dough are folded to encase the butter inside.
Oh, now, that is a match made in heaven.
Now it's time for the dough to squeeze down to size.
Which will help seal the dough and also take the dough thickness down from about an inch to about 1/4 of an inch.
A press roller seals the butter inside the dough.
Then it immediately continues into a second roller, appropriately named the satellite roller.
It's a series of 28 small rollers that rotate around one central rod.
Which are kind of, like, mimicking if you were to roll it at home in a rolling pin.
The satellite roller gently takes the thickness of the dough from one inch down to 1/4 of an inch.
When the thin dough emerges, it's on to my favorite machine in the factory the fan folder.
Basically, it's taking the dough and butter and layering dough, butter, dough, butter, dough, butter, and that's what creates that nice flaky cookie.
As the layers pile up, the dough once again becomes too thick, so it travels through a second satellite roller to squeeze it back down to 1/4 of an inch.
An internal die cuts the sheets into rectangles.
It's been a long day for the dough already, so it's time for a little R&R.
The dough is placed on trays, stacked on a cart, and wheeled into the freezer room.
It spends six to eight hours in a negative-10 degree freezer that brings the temperature down to 30 degrees.
It also keeps the dough from getting too tense.
If our dough is too tense, when we go through our next process, it won't be as elastic.
It'll be too tight, and it will break.
After its overnight rest, the super-relaxed dough is placed back on the conveyer belt and overlapped before entering a third satellite roller that, once again, presses it down to 1/4 of an inch.
Are you sensing a theme here? That's right.
It's time for yet another fold.
This time, through a machine called a reciprocating belt that moves the dough back and forth, creating even more layers of dough and butter.
At this point, we have over Just think about all that buttery flavor packed into those layers.
Right before the dough goes through the last satellite roller, it gets a light coating of sugar.
After rolling around for eight hours, it's finally time for the dough to meet the cross roller.
The cross roller will gently bring the thickness down on the dough.
That's enough rolling for a lifetime.
Now we get to chop up the layered dough into cookies.
The dough runs through a series of slicers that kind of look like pizza cutters.
It cuts almost 4-foot-wide dough into four 11-inch strips.
Those strips then roll into folding plows that shapes the cookies to give them a butterfly appearance.
Next, a guillotine slices through the dough at the rate of 600 pieces each minute, creating perfect one-ounce cookies.
Rows of cookies are placed into bins and rolled over to the oven, where a handful of workers separate the pieces onto a giant 48-foot-long oven conveyer belt.
Inside this massive oven, the cookies will bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees.
I think I just discovered my favorite color golden-brown cookie.
Then it's a quick five-minute trip through a 32-foot-long cooling tunnel to get it down to room temperature.
They're almost ready to eat, but first, they need their classic Sugar Bowl clam-shell package.
Packed with 36 cookies in each box, there is enough to share with the whole family at breakfast time or with a bunch of friends at your next party.
But if you're anything like me, these Petite Palmiers never make it out of the kitchen.
The cookies are flaky and crispy when you snap them.
That's how you know it's the perfect cookie.
Coming up, find out how a bag of beans becomes millions of tiny milk-chocolate drops.
Nothing is better than a freshly baked chocolate-chip cookie.
Well, maybe a cookie with double the chips.
You know what? On second thought, just forget the cookie altogether.
Chocolate chips.
They're the perfect little snack.
And Ghirardelli has been perfecting the bites for over 150 years.
Today the company makes all kinds of delicious chocolate.
But one of their best sellers it's this perfect little semisweet chocolate chip.
It's part dark, part milk, has a little bit of sugar in it so it's not quite sweet, but it's not quite bitter.
To make the perfect semisweet chip, it's all about crafting the most delicious chocolate possible.
And that starts with the beans.
The beans come into the factory in 120-pound sacks that are brought to the bean room to be cleaned.
Each sack is slit open, and the beans fall into the cleaner that removes any stones, twigs, or light debris.
Now here's where that Ghirardelli difference really comes into play.
Most companies will roast the bean whole, but Ghirardelli roasts only the nib.
The nib is the heart of the cocoa bean.
And when you roast the nib, you can really control the process and the roast level and really deliver a consistent product all the time.
In order to get to the nib, Ghirardelli uses a machine called a winnower which cracks the bean open and removes the nib from the shell.
Once the nibs are free, they go to the roaster, where they are cooked in gigantic 6-ton batches.
Then they go through a milling process that turns the nibs into liquid chocolate.
Before this liquid can take on its little bitty shape, it needs to be tempered.
The purpose of it is to ensure that as the chips start to harden, the crystals harden in a form that will be very stable over time.
Once the chocolate has been tempered, it's pumped to the depositor on the chip line.
Depositor is a machine full of a lot of pistons and little cavities.
Each stroke of these pistons deposits a measured amount of chocolate onto a cooled belt.
Because the belt is cool, the liquid chocolate begins to immediately solidify.
The depositor then moves up and away from the belt and leaves a little curl on the top of the chips.
There are 1,000 nozzles in the depositor, and the machine runs at a rate of 18 strokes a minute, creating 18,000 half-gram chips every minute.
The bottom of the chips are cool, but to harden them all the way through, the conveyer belt covered with chocolate chips heads into a cooling tunnel.
The chilly trip takes three minutes before they emerge as solid little bits.
Think about all the chocolate-chip cookies I could make with these.
As they exit, row after row of chocolate chips are scraped off the stainless-steel belt before falling onto a conveyer heading towards a series of scales.
The purpose of the scale is to measure out different small quantities of chips to make sure that each time we make a bag, the weight is exactly right.
The chips drop into bags then travel along a conveyer to a robot that picks up three bags at a time and places them in a box.
Soon, those chips will be on their way into batters around the world.
Our semisweet chocolate chips are great in baking.
I eat them out of my hand.
But they're fantastic in cookies.
Play it off.
Just play it off.
We didn't hear it or see it.
Sticking a quarter inside the knob.
Why won't it go out the door? Man, stop tripping.
What did I say? Mmm! Heh-heh! Yeah, yeah, we're warming up.
Well, I could eat, though.

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