For the first time, Inside The Factory goes overseas.
We are in Parma, Italy,
to discover the secrets of one of our favourite foods.
Every year in the UK, we eat nearly 1.5 billion bowls of pasta.
We've come to the largest dried pasta factory in the world.
In fact, it's so big they get around on bicycles!
And, tonight, they are letting us inside.
60% of the pasta made in Italy comes out of this factory.
And, every year, 3,000 tonnes of it end up in the UK.
I'm Gregg Wallace.
Tutti spaghetti! It's a waterfall!
And I'm learning how they make 150,000 kilometres of spaghetti every day.
It's like a jungle in here.
I'll come face-to-face with the amazing technology behind more than
100 pasta shapes.
Every single wheel is one more pasta shape.
And discover how they've super-sized traditional methods to deliver
almost a tonne every minute.
It's like a clothes line.
It's like putting out the washing to dry.
I'm Cherry Healey and I'll be on a race against time, following the
journey of this delicate herb, basil.
From field to a jar of pesto in just five hours.
It's like a really odd video game.
And I'll learn the secrets of cooking and serving perfect pasta.
So, it's all about keeping the sauce on the pasta?
And historian Ruth Goodman discovers that pasta's been on British menus
for longer than you'd think.
That's a long time ago, isn't it, 1390.
In the next 24 hours,
over 1,000 tonnes of pasta will fly out of this factory.
We're going to show you how they manage production on such an epic scale.
Welcome to Inside The Factory.
Behind me is the Barilla pasta factory in Parma, Italy.
The size of 100 football pitches,
it churns out 330,000 tonnes of pasta every year.
That's enough to make three billion plates of pasta.
They produce 110 different types.
But tonight I'm going to follow this wheat as it is transformed into the
world's favourite dried pasta, spaghetti.
It all begins with a very impressive delivery.
Gianluca Allodi is seeing it in from Ravenna, 100 miles away.
That is enormous.
How long is that train?
500 metres.
500 metres?!
That is very, very impressive.
And a little bit scary.
This train's 20 freight cars are bringing in 1,150 tonnes of wheat.
Are we ready to unload?
HE SPEAKS ITALIAN
This is the key ingredient for pasta.
And it's where my spaghetti production line begins.
It falls on the floor!
Of course it does!
It drops through grates on to underground conveyor belts which
whizz it across to these temperature controlled storage silos.
Together they hold 600,000 tonnes.
To unload...
Yes? How long it take?
20 minutes per carriage.
20 minutes each carriage?
They'll be here all day!
No, will be around eight hours.
That's a whole day.
In England, that is a whole day.
Eight hours.
VOICEOVER: Besides water, this is
the only ingredient in this factory's dried pasta,
so they take it pretty seriously.
It is our gold. Your gold?
Yes. I have been looking at factories for three years... Tre anni.
I have never, ever seen anything like this.
This is incredible.
Two monster deliveries like this come in every week.
But before the wheat's cleared to go any further,
it's held for eight hours of quality checks.
Then it's sent on its way.
From the silos, it heads to the
on-site mill. Travelling the 200 metres on overhead conveyors.
With Gianluca and me in hot pursuit.
This seven-story mill is one of the biggest of its type in the world.
As soon as the wheat arrives,
every single grain gets a once over to check it's up to scratch.
This is the optical sorter machine.
It's looking? Yes. It can see?
It's looking at every kernel.
And it decides to remove it or not.
This machine's digital camera scans 34,000 kernels a second.
It identifies and rejects any that are broken or discoloured.
The machine removed this?
Yes, because they are black.
How does it remove...?
By air compressor, a little bit blows, removes, one by one.
Solo minuto, solo minuto.
The machine can see...
In a fraction of a second. And if it's not perfect,
it shoots it with a jet of air?
Absolutely, yes.
Absolutely. Really?
THEY SPEAK ITALIAN
Now everything has to stop while the wheat is soaked in water
for 30 hours.
Meanwhile, Cherry's been finding out about the special variety they use here.
It's called durum wheat.
I'm at the factory's research lab where the twice-named Alessandro D'Alessandro
is filling me in.
Hi, Cherry, how are you? Good to meet you. Come with me.
VOICEOVER: I want to know why durum wheat is so perfectly suited to making pasta,
and what makes it different from ordinary wheat.
And here we are.
In this way I will explain a little bit more about durum
and common wheat.
If, in summer, you go in a field of common wheat, you'll see this kind.
So, that is regular wheat that would make bread, pastry,
the kind of thing I'd have in my cupboard at home?
Yes, perfect. And that is durum wheat?
So, it does look pretty different.
Italy grows more durum wheat than anywhere else in Europe.
5,000 square miles is devoted to the crop.
Every summer they harvest four million tonnes of it.
And its main use is for making pasta.
In Latin, durum means hard.
So the grain in this is harder?
Yes. VOICEOVER: When you grind these two wheat varieties,
they produce very different results.
This is the white flour.
This is absolutely what's in my cupboard at home.
OK. That is your regular flour.
Yes, coming from the common wheat.
And try this.
That is what you get when you mill durum wheat.
It's very granular.
It's courser.
The durum wheat is much more hard,
and it's much more difficult to mill.
It's called semolina.
That means semi-milled.
To me, semolina is a pudding I used to have in the '80s.
But, in fact, its primary function is to make pasta.
Pasta flour? Absolutely.
Now we will prepare some dough.
VOICEOVER: When we turned these two flours into dough,
they have very different properties.
Alessandro's is made from durum wheat semolina.
Mine from common wheat flour.
Now, using a machine that measures the elasticity of dough,
we can see how they behave differently.
First, the common wheat.
I feel like we're making miniature pizzas.
We close it. OK.
And, if you're able to see what happens now...
Turn it...
Wow! It inflates, it's very elastic.
Look how big it is.
OK, so, that's the kind of size that you can get?
Yes. And it looks thin.
Thin and stretchy. Not so strong.
The reason why you can use it for pizza, for example.
Because you can stretch it far.
VOICEOVER: Now to try the durum wheat dough.
This is the closest I'll get to Italian cooking, I reckon.
Is that down?
See what happens. So, it looks much thicker.
Yes.
The dimension of this one is more like this.
So, the durum wheat is less stretchy and much more strong?
Yes. And that's what we need for the pasta cooking process.
VOICEOVER: But I want to know what happens when you turn these
two kinds of dough into pasta.
This is pasta made from common wheat.
And this is your classic durum wheat pasta?
It is. In together? Yes.
Three, two, one...
Go.
Why is there a layer of foam and bubbles in this one?
Here, the starch is released in the cooking water.
So, that's all the starch coming out of the pasta.
Whereas the stronger durum wheat holds the starch in
meaning the pasta keeps its shape and the water stays clear.
But how does this affect the taste?
First, the common wheat pasta.
Right, my gosh. Yeah, it's really sticky and mulchy.
Buon appetito. Buon appetito.
It tastes slimy.
And it's left an unpleasant coating in my mouth.
Is that all the starch still coming out?
Yeah. Let's try the durum pasta.
OK. I'm not doing this well.
This is why you don't eat spaghetti on a first date.
OK.
Much nicer to eat.
Not slimy.
Not sticky. Definitely I can see why the durum wheat is preferable when
making pasta. It's clear now, huh?
Absolutely.
Durum wheat's semolina guarantees a high-quality product and most of the
dried pasta we buy in the UK is made from it.
Back at the mill, the durum wheat is ready to
be turned into semolina.
This is an incredible room.
Yes, our spider room.
This astonishing 3.5 mile long web of steel pipes connects the seven
stories of the building and every stage of the milling process.
Right now my wheat is shooting through here
on its way to the first floor.
What is happening? Here, we start our grinding process.
So, the wheat goes down and two cylinders, two wheels crush?
Crush in the right way.
I can show you the result. Yes, please. Per favore.
The coarse outer bran is cracked open to release the pale,
yellow endosperm.
The part we need to make semolina.
How do you separate?
Let me show you.
This is our semolina.
Yes, but you can't shake everything with your hand.
Not exactly.
We have special machines to do that.
What is that!
Many, many hands.
It's like one great big sieve.
Yes. Exactly.
In fact, it is 26 sieves stacked on top of one another.
Our crushed kernels are piped in at the top,
then descend through increasingly finer sieves,
which separate the endosperm from the bran.
There are eight of these bizarre machines.
They process 34 tonnes of wheat an hour.
24-hours a day,
seven days a week.
That is fantastic and funny.
How long does it take?
A few seconds. A few seconds?
A few seconds from there to here.
Can I see? Yes.
This is bran.
This is almost semolina.
We have black and brown specks inside and we have to take out these.
VOICEOVER: I can't see any specks.
But these machines will keep sieving it until it's perfectly yellow.
And they're so concerned about quality
they send it off for yet another round of checks
before it's released to
the next stage of the production process.
We've made our semolina, now we're ready to make spaghetti.
But when I was a boy it was an exotic dish.
Ruth Goodman's delving back into our pasta history,
beginning with a famous hoax.
In 1957, the BBC ran a short news report about
the spaghetti harvest featuring a
family harvesting fresh spaghetti...
from trees.
After picking, the spaghetti is laid out to dry in the warm Alpine sun.
It was the ultimate April fool, a yearly tradition for broadcasters.
And this one relied on how little was known about pasta
in 1950s Britain.
So, when did the first pasta appear in the UK?
In the archives of the British Library,
food historian Polly Russell has been searching for the answer.
This is Eliza Acton's first edition Modern Cookery, from 1845.
And right from the first edition,
you see that you have pasta being served on its own for ordinary
middle-class families.
That's extraordinary, isn't it?
Victorians eating pasta is surprising,
but Polly's discovered a reference
that's much earlier in this precious manuscript.
It just looks so small.
It's amazing, isn't it?
This little old scroll is the Forme Of Cury.
Look at that.
VOICEOVER: A cookbook written in 1390 for King Richard II.
This may be the first version of pasta or a pasta dish
in the English language, back to 1390.
It's a long time ago, isn't it, 1390.
And we really think this is a pasta recipe.
When you look at what they are describing,
both in terms of what to do and the ingredients,
it really suggests this is a prototype pasta.
This recipe is written in Middle English.
"Take flour...
"Flour of pandemain."
I think that's white flour. Yes, very finely milled, white flour.
"And make thereof thin foils as paper."
So, just like lasagne.
Leaves of pasta.
The leaves of pasta!
I suppose the only real way of knowing...
Is to cook it up.
VOICEOVER: 627 years after it was written,
we're going to try this recipe out.
"Take flour of pandemain."
There's no eggs, are there, it's just water.
No, it doesn't say anything about how long we should knead it
or work it or anything.
This has been written for somebody who already knows what
they're doing.
"With roller. Take thin foils, as thin as paper."
That's not bad. That's paper-thin.
And then we've got to "dry it hard."
Which I think that must mean in the bottom of the oven.
Very medieval, that.
"Seethe it in the broth."
Okey doke.
"Then take cheese and lay it in the dish with poudre douce."
Poudre douce is a mixture of
ginger and cinnamon.
So it will have a sweetish savoury taste.
There's no mention of putting that in the oven.
I don't think that is fit for a king's table.
For me, that just has to go in an oven.
We're sticking it in the oven.
This certainly looks like pasta.
But how did this recipe end up in an
English king's 14th century cookbook?
It is probable that the Arabs brought pasta with them in the ninth century
through southern Europe, starting in Sicily.
And pasta may have moved up with William the Conqueror.
I mean, the link is really close because the Normans invade Sicily
in 1060, and they invade Britain 1066.
So, the Arabs bring pasta to southern Europe?
Yes. And then the Normans bring it up to us?
Quite possibly.
Well, it looks like pasta.
Yes.
That's nicer than I was expecting, actually. It's very nice.
Better than it looks. They were definitely onto something.
I think we can very safely say this is a pasta dish.
The master cooks knew what they were doing.
VOICEOVER: So, it turns out pasta's been in the UK for six centuries.
A food that once graced a king's table, is now an everyday favourite.
Back at the factory,
my freshly ground semolina is travelling from the mill,
300 metres underground, to the production area.
Claudio Dallagiacomo is the boss on the production line.
You must make a lot of spaghetti.
Six tonnes per hour of spaghetti.
Six tonnes every hour?
Every hour. You show me how to make spaghetti?
Absolutely, absolutely.
My semolina comes through this hopper and is fed downwards into a
high-speed mixer where it is combined with water to make dough.
We use only semolina and water.
When I make pasta at home, I use an egg.
Semolina and water only.
Nothing else? Nothing.
Don't lie to me!
And how long will it mix?
20 minuti.
Perfect, your Italian language is perfect.
2.5 hours into the process,
my dough is mixed and is ready to be transformed into spaghetti.
With the help of some clever bits of kit.
Oh, OK.
OK, this is your die, your mould.
The dough gets pushed through here?
For every hole, we take one spaghetti.
VOICEOVER: Two blocks of dies are mounted in this machine.
The dough is pushed through at 100 times normal air pressure, creating
11,000 individual strands of spaghetti.
Wow! Wow!
This is spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti.
Tutti spaghetti!
In just one minute, the machine produces 52 miles of spaghetti.
Enough to stretch from Glasgow to Edinburgh.
Can I touch? Absolutely.
VOICEOVER: Don't worry, I washed my hands thoroughly before I came in.
It's constantly moving.
Fantastic. Fantastic.
It's a waterfall.
As the spaghetti descends,
it's looped over moving rails and cut into 65 centimetre sections.
You have row upon row upon row of spaghetti hanging.
You are cutting through, well, five or six lines of spaghetti here.
Exactly.
I like it. What happens to all the small spaghetti that is cut off?
Very, very important, we recycle this product and we use it in the mix.
So, the small spaghetti you cut goes back upstairs to the mix?
Exactly. VOICEOVER: At this stage, my raw spaghetti is 30% water.
It feels really spongy, really springy and bouncy.
Can I try?
Good?
Very chewy. It goes like...
Like chewing gum.
Next, my pasta moves on to the drying area.
It's like a clothes line, it's like putting out the washing to dry. Exactly.
Traditionally, spaghetti would have been hung in the open air for three
days to be dried by a warm summer breeze.
But here things are a little more hi-tech.
Oh, my word, that is enormous!
That is just huge.
This is the drying equipment.
VOICEOVER: My spaghetti now begins a 10-hour journey through what is basically a
super-sized sauna.
Very hot, hey?
It's like a jungle in here!
It's hot and it is damp and sticky.
What temperature is this?
About 70 degrees. 70-75 degrees.
I feel like I am the spaghetti.
The heat dries the spaghetti
sucking out 10% of its moisture in the first hour.
Very, very hot. Heh, heh.
Yeah, that is hot. Can we get out of the oven, please?
So, that is stage one?
Over the next nine hours,
the spaghetti snakes through the dryer and three more levels of heat,
taking the moisture level right down to the ideal 12.5%.
It's a slow, gentle process that ensures
the spaghetti won't crack when it is cooked.
But it's missing one crucial ingredient, a sauce to go with it.
Spag bol is second only to a roast dinner on Britain's list of favourite
family meals but how is Bolognese sauce produced?
Cherry's been to find out.
Italy is Europe's biggest producer of tomatoes.
And the flat, fertile plains around Parma are studded with tomato plants.
Farmed outdoors in direct sunlight,
this variety has been specially selected to be perfect for pasta sauce.
The skin is very tough but they taste incredibly sweet and delicious.
They need a thick skin to allow them to be
mechanically processed and they
are normally ripe and ready from July.
The annual Italian tomato harvest is under way right now.
That machine collects the whole plant, the leaves and the roots.
I should probably get out of the way.
The harvester swallows up the crop,
shaking loose the tomatoes before sifting out any unwanted debris.
And, in just one hour, the trailer can collect 15 tonnes.
That's around 300,000 tomatoes.
The full load is then taken from the farm by tractor and trailer to the
giant tomato processing centre
where I'm helping Giacoppa Calvi unload.
Whay!
Oh, that's so fun.
Do you want? Definitely.
Whoa, that's really heavy.
Oh, my God, that's really heavy.
VOICEOVER: The jet of water pushes the tomatoes
down and out of the bottom of the trailer.
Is this another reason why the tomatoes need to have a thick skin,
because if you did this to regular tomatoes they'd turn into soup?
Yes. VOICEOVER: It takes half an hour to carefully wash them all through.
Everything to do with farming requires so much patience.
If you're a farmer, you have to be a good lover because you need some
patience in your job.
So, if you're a farmer, you're a good lover?
Yes.
So Italian. So Italian.
So Italian.
The tomatoes bob happily along on a series of aqueducts, lifts,
and storage pools, which simultaneously clean
and transport them.
Once inside, they are steamed to remove that extra thick skin
before heading off to be cooked.
This impressive mountain of gleaming steel is, essentially,
a pressure cooker turning my tomato pulp into concentrate.
7kg of tomatoes reduce down into one kilogram of paste.
Oh, wow.
Then the drums of processed tomatoes travel six miles to another factory.
Where Gian Luigi Mason
is adding the final ingredients.
Carotti in cubetti.
Correct. Carrots sliced into small cubes.
Beautiful, orangey goodness.
Onion and basil are added to the tomatoes and carrots and the whole
lot simmers for an hour.
Wow. So, is that now finished?
Yes. So, this is 3,000 litres of this sauce.
How many bowls of pasta do you think I could make with this?
I think around 12,000 dishes of pasta.
That is one big dinner party.
To bottle this much sauce requires a 42 head rotary volumetric filler
running at six bottles a second.
Here it is.
So, next time you whip up a spag bol or lasagne at home,
just think about the incredible journey that humble tomato has had to go
on to bring you an Italian feast.
After nearly eight hours of careful processing,
my spaghetti is now halfway through the dryer.
But this isn't the only pasta that they produce here.
On 18 other lines, they make an amazing 110 different shapes.
From penne to lasagne sheets.
Alessandro Spadini is showing me the die wheels that create everyone of them.
Wow. Every single one of these wheels is one more pasta shape?
Exactly, Gregg.
Alessandro has a challenge for me.
Can I match the die to the pasta shape?
Where do you think this shape comes from?
This is easy, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because, look, you've got the ribs here.
Give me another one.
I have something a little bit more difficult.
Not the right direction, Gregg.
I don't know.
This one is for fusilli.
Why would that make that? You see here three wings.
Oh, OK, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What actually shows is the end.
OK, give me another, give me another.
This is very difficult. This is very small.
That is like a beautiful little shell.
What is that called? Gnochetti.
Small gnocchi? Exactly.
Gregg, what about this blade?
Really? Really.
Just this? Exactly.
Yeah, yeah. So, it must come out...
It must come out like this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.
So, it's always amazing.
I'd like to see a pasta with the smooth head.
Like mine? And glasses.
Named Gregg, probably.
Greggio. Can I see one of these wheels working?
Sure you can. Let's go.
Come on. Andiamo.
In the production area, the dies making bestsellers, like spaghetti,
are in constant use.
But die wheels making other shapes are only loaded when they're needed.
Come here, Gregg.
Oh! Today, this massive macaroni die is churning out
enough for 230 packets every minute.
Pasta is flowing out of the die,
and the knives continuously cut the pasta to obtain the right shape.
I'm watching 100 little worms coming down... Being cut.
That is lovely.
This is running all the time?
Yes. Continuously.
It's a continuous process, so 24-hours a day.
Thousands of little worm macaroni every hour.
Well, you don't have the mouth big enough.
Almost!
From the production lines, popular shapes
go straight into boxes and out to shops all over the world.
Others head to these storage silos,
ready to be packed the instant an order comes in.
It's very simple,
because you just open the silo and
it starts automatically to flow down,
in order to continue filling the
packaging machine without interruption.
It's amazing, isn't it?
Allesandro, how much pasta does one of these things hold?
So it depends on the shape.
As an average, it contains three tonnes of pasta. Each silo.
And how long does it take to empty?
It's very quick. Less than one hour.
This is a nonstop system designed to satisfy a huge customer demand.
This year, we have to produce 330,000 tonnes of pasta which are
roughly four billion dishes of pasta.
We can feed the world, roughly.
I think I've eaten a billion of them.
Macaroni is just one of many pasta shapes on our supermarket shelves.
So how do you choose which one to buy?
Cherry has been to sort out her farfalle from her fusilli.
At home, I don't get to choose what pasta we have, my kids do.
And it's normally pasta bows with tonnes of tomato sauce
and gallons of cheese. I don't think that's what the Italians had in mind when they
created all these beautiful pasta shapes.
To find out what's so different about each variety,
I've enlisted some help.
Ciao, Silvana! Ciao, Cherry.
VOICEOVER: Silvana Lanzetta from Naples is an expert on pasta.
How many different types of pasta are there?
We have over 350 pasta shapes.
350?
Over it, yes.
Why do I only ever eat one?
Traditionally each region of Italy has its very own pasta.
This one, for instance, they are spaghetti alla chitarra.
Oh, so guitar pasta?
Yes. Which come from Abruzzo, this area here.
This pasta is called strozzapreti, from Bologna.
This is so odd!
Farfalle, pasta bow.
Oh, look! My favourite!
Your favourite? Pasta bows.
There you go. From Milano.
Bucatini. They are spaghetti with a hole.
A tiny hole all the way through it.
From Rome. What's this one called?
These are called Angel Hair.
Angel Hair? Because they are so thin.
They come from Sicily.
And finally, orecchiette.
The name means little ears.
Little ears! Yeah, because the shape reminds a little bit of ears.
But why bother with so many different shapes?
Silvana, like most Italian cooks...
Wow! Yes, please!
Believes it's critical to match your shape to your sauce.
Does it really matter what sauce goes with pasta?
Of course it does! But it's just flour and water - it's all the same,
isn't it? It's just in different shapes for fun.
Indeed. No, it's not for fun - it's to carry the sauce.
Be careful, eh? Don't mess with Italians. Is it not?
VOICEOVER: In fact the design of each pasta shape has a huge effect on how it holds the sauce.
You've got the fusilli - tuna and onion sauce.
It fits the spirals.
Tuna has got right inside the ridges of the pasta.
Absolutely. You can see also the onions.
They kind of twist themselves around the pasta.
Yes. OK, so shell pasta...
Conchiglie. This is made with chunks of vegetables,
that are held by the cup.
So because this pasta is a bit bigger and it has a bigger scoop,
you can put chunkier vegetables in that?
Yes. And my favourite - the bow pasta.
Farfalle, which means butterflies.
Butterflies? So in fact it's not a bow shape - it's a butterfly shape.
Yes. This is particularly good for a creamy cheesy sauce.
The two scoops, the form, like basically two spoons.
So it's all about keeping the sauce on the pasta?
Absolutely. The pasta is a vessel to present your sauce.
A good rule of thumb is to match large shapes with thick chunky sauces,
and smaller shapes with thin or creamy sauces.
But what about our favourite pasta dish?
One of the pastas that's not here is a classic Italian dish,
spaghetti bolognese.
That's not Italian - that's British.
No, surely that's as Italian as it comes. Spaghetti bolognese!
You would never find someone in Italy eating spaghetti bolognese.
Never.
Italians traditionally pair bolognese or ragu sauce with the much thicker
ribbon pasta tagliatelle, saving spaghetti for sauces like carbonara.
I'm going to show you a proper ragu with tagliatelle.
Meanwhile, I'm determined to prove that spaghetti with bolognese is a
match made in heaven.
I'll show you how I make mine, and we'll compare notes.
VOICEOVER: Time for a cook-off.
So that is your version of...
This is the only version!
Pasta alla Cherry. Doesn't get more Italian than that, eh?
Oh, gosh.
Mmm. They taste really different.
The pasta has the flavour of the sauce.
Yeah, because it absorbed it.
So it's all about tagliatelle bolognese, not spaghetti bolognese.
Absolutely.
I think you may have won.
I know.
VOICEOVER: The tagliatelle wraps up the ragu so you get an even mix of both with
each mouthful, whereas the sauce falls off my spaghetti,
leaving me with a pile of bolognese at the bottom of my bowl.
I do now see you've got to get the right sauce with the right pasta,
and I promise you I will never put meat sauce with spaghetti again.
I'm so proud of you - you make me such a happy lady! I've learnt so much!
Nearly 13 hours in, my spaghetti has been shaped and dried.
Now it's headed for the end of the production line,
where it will be cut down to size.
Right, so the pasta has been dried for ten hours,
and now it looks like that.
OK. We cut the head, we cut the end of the spaghetti,
and we cut the middle for the final length, in this way.
Traditionally, spaghetti was sold in 50-centimetre lengths,
but today to make it more practical for consumers, it's chopped to 25 centimetres.
Tell me. Why is it this length?
This is a perfect standard for cooking the pasta.
I want it smaller, so when it goes in the pan it can...
Because now the pan water is here,
and I have this - I have to push it.
I want it smaller.
Piccola pasta.
No, this is the correct length for a good plate of spaghetti.
VOICEOVER: I'm not going to win this argument.
These people know their pasta.
Over in the research and development lab,
Chiara Negroni is showing me how every product is thoroughly tested on a
small scale before it can graduate to the factory's production lines.
So we are preparing a new product.
Tortellini is not new.
But the recipe inside is new.
OK. The filling is made with tomato and pork meat.
Can I try to make it? Yes.
Come on! VOICEOVER: Time for me to show everyone what I can do.
I make tortellini.
Your own? Si.
My wife, she showed me how to make tortellini.
OK.
No acqua - no water?
No, no, no.
Oh, OK.
Bene, buono?
Molto bene. What do you do with these fingers?
You're doing something with these... You're bending it over like that.
A new kind of shape.
Un'altro, un'altro!
Voila.
GREGG MIMICS A TRUMPET
VOICEOVER: Every new recipe is put through a mini production line,
to check it can be produced on an industrial scale.
Chiara is very bravely letting me help.
You take the pasta, and then you put it inside.
Stand back.
OK. OK, OK.
It's very fast work normally, because the pasta is something...
Uh-oh, uh-oh!
Whoa! No problem.
OK. This is the pasta.
The filling is inside.
In there? OK.
No!
What is that?
It's like magic!
The right shape of tortellini.
Don't laugh at me!
I love this!
I want one at home.
The tortellini is then pasteurised and partially dried before emerging
at the end of the conveyor.
Hey!
This is the final product.
There they are. Beautiful!
Now, what happens now with this experiment?
We need to taste it with the people, and then if the people like,
we produce them.
It's for me? Yes.
Well! Grazie. Ciao!
It can take several months before a new product is ready for mass
production, and only one in three make it that far.
But once it does, a huge customer base awaits.
We spend over £5 billion a year on pizza, pasta and other favourites.
Ruth has been finding out where our passion for Italian food started.
According to the latest figures,
there are 4,735 Italian restaurants currently operating in Britain.
But just post-war, there were only a handful.
So how did we fall in love with Italian food?
Well, it all began here, in London's Soho.
In the late 1940s London's Italian community moved into Soho,
centring around Frith Street.
The Polledri family set up their cafe, Bar Italia, in 1949.
Grandson Antonio runs it today.
Wow. Has it changed much at all?
Well, since it was opened in 1949, nothing's changed really.
It has that feel. Very little has changed.
The formica is still as it was.
The Gaggia coffee machine is virtually still as it was.
I mean, why here?
My grandparents came from Italy.
They saw an opportunity for good coffee,
but also as a social centre in the heart of Soho,
which was predominantly Italians at the time.
So it was a really, really Italian area?
Massive. It was called Little Italy.
There were 15,000 Italians living in London in 1951.
Many working in the West End as waiters in French restaurants.
But in the 1950s they started to open up their own,
relaxed Italian trattoria-style eateries.
This is the Soho directory for 1958.
And you can see, there's quite a lot of Italian restaurants being listed.
In fact, there were a total of 13 in just five streets.
This was Gennaro's.
And in here it says,
"The 50-year-old family restaurant
"with a reputation for excellent Italian food
"and a charming tradition of presenting a flower to ladies at dinner."
So this is Frith Street.
So there were two side-by-side here.
Even the building's gone.
And next door, well, it is still a restaurant.
It's not an Italian any more. It's a burger place now.
Most of the original restaurants have long gone.
But there is one restaurant that not only survived and thrived,
but became the first of the mass-market Italian restaurant chains.
Spaghetti House in Goodge Street opened its doors in September 1955.
Hello.
VOICEOVER: Luigi Lavarini, the son of one of the original owners,
runs the restaurant chain today.
How did the Spaghetti House come about?
My father and my uncle met in
Bar Italia and came up with the name,
Spaghetti House. How old were you when the restaurant opened?
I was six months old.
So I was there.
As a child I remember,
always an exciting and buzzing atmosphere in the restaurant.
Was it? People would eat close together on small tables.
There would be queues outside.
And what sort of food was being served back in 1955?
If we look here... Oh, this is your early menu.
This goes right back to the beginning.
I can't help but notice that spaghetti takes pride of place.
Spaghetti Bolognese.
VOICEOVER: Spag bol might not have been an authentic Italian dish but it was
what British people wanted to see on the menu.
They felt transported to Italy.
All things Italian became cool.
Italian style, fashionable.
So, spaghetti in London became hip, even glamorous.
Why do you think it was spaghetti
that caught people's imagination in particular?
It's fiddly, isn't it, to eat.
It was quite a sophisticated thing to know how to twiddle...
Oh, I see. ..spaghetti.
So you could take your girlfriend to the Spaghetti House and show off
your... Show off your skills. Cosmopolitan.
She would have been impressed. Yeah.
The following decade saw Italian restaurants opening right across the country.
Affordable food and friendly hospitality was a winning combination
that taught us to enjoy eating out.
Oh! Wonderful.
Buon appetito.
And our relationship with Italian food is a love affair that has stood
the test of time.
Just think how different British high streets would be if, 60 years ago,
the Italians of Soho had not shared their cooking with us.
It's taken 13 hours to get my spaghetti to this stage.
And now it's heading for the packaging area.
It arrives on an overhead conveyor
and is fed down through this machine which weighs it out into rotating
metal pockets.
This is the packaging machine.
The correct weight for the pack, in this case 500g.
And we use this part for introducing the correct quantity of the product, OK.
So, upstairs, this is weighing the 500g?
And then it's dropping down into this.
And moving it... It continues weighing.
This looks like bambino uccelli.
Oh, OK. Like a baby bird.
It's like...
Yeah.
Finally, it's ready to go into a box.
The finished product.
And do you know what I do, I take it out and I cut it in half.
OK. To make it the right size.
I'm not gonna score any brownie points with that sort of behaviour.
But I am going to put the right accompaniment with my spaghetti.
Pesto is another of our favourite pasta sauces.
In fact, we spend £45 million on the stuff.
Cherry has been to see it made.
This classic green pesto has one herb at its heart.
Basil.
The word pesto means to pound.
Fresh basil leaves are crushed with pine nuts, Parmesan and olive oil.
But the problem is, that when they're cut,
they quickly turn black and lose their flavour.
So how do you harvest basil and make pesto on an industrial scale that's
going to last over a year in a sealed bottle?
Here, in northern Italy, they harvest at dawn
when the delicate leaves are cool and packed with flavour.
The harvester is cutting the top of the basil at a set height,
collecting it up into the back.
By 8am they collect 20 tonnes of basil.
The boxed up leaves are then transported in a refrigerated lorry for
12 miles to the pesto making factory.
The man responsible for turning the fresh herb into pesto is Marco Ciacelli.
It's really green and fantastic.
It's beautiful. Now, we test the temperature.
What is the right temperature?
In this case it's 21 degrees.
What happens if the temperature is more?
The basil became black very, very fast.
So, if the basil goes black, the flavour isn't there?
Yes, is not enough, is not correct.
It's a high maintenance herb.
Yeah, yeah.
My basil leaves get three washes in fresh cold water.
OK, let's go.
Once to remove stones,
once to remove insects.
And once for luck.
Any rogue black leaves are discarded.
Most of them are green.
There's hardly any black.
Oh, look, there's one. Ah!
Hurray!
VOICEOVER: Then, they're steamed for a few minutes to stop the enzymes in the basil
from oxidising and turning the leaves black.
And finally, seasoned with a mix of salt and sunflower oil.
Now, I need to add the cheese.
With the help of the vacuum grip liftronic manipulator.
Oh, wow!
It is more than 30kg.
This is 30kg and it feels like it weighs nothing.
This enormous wheel of Grana Padano cheese is similar to Parmesan.
It's like a really odd video game.
OK. OK, press this one.
OK, thank you.
Oh, wow. And this is an industrial-sized cheese grater...
And off we go.
That can grate the whole cheese in under 60 seconds.
It's a fountain of cheese.
Yes. This is my spiritual home.
OK.
VOICEOVER: Traditionally, pesto contains 7-10% pine nuts, but here,
they use cashews instead.
Why do you use cashews and not pine nuts?
With the cashew, we maintain for a long time the shelf life of our product.
But does it change the taste?
No, the taste of the cashew and the pine nuts is very, very close.
Less than three hours after we harvested the basil,
it's combined with more sunflower oil,
cheese and cashews in three giant mixing bowls.
How long does the pesto now mix?
OK, for five minutes.
For only five minutes?
Yes. Only five minutes and after that we are ready for the filling.
Once the pesto is in the jars,
it's pasteurised by heating it to over 90 degrees for up to eight minutes.
This kills the bacteria and gives it a shelf life of 18 months.
The whole process can be completed within five hours of the harvest.
It's hard to believe it's natural.
It's so green and bright.
We never use any preservatives.
Nothing. Only natural ingredients.
Justa like-a mamma used to make!
Fantastic.
Locked in a jar, the colours of the Italian countryside.
Ten minutes after it left the production line,
my spaghetti is safely tucked into a carton of 25 packs.
It has travelled five and a half miles through the factory
and now it's on its final leg of the journey,
to the distribution warehouse and into the arms of a robot.
It takes 54 laser-guided vehicles to keep things moving in the world's
biggest pasta distribution centre.
They work nonstop to shift 10,000 pallets in 24 hours.
Keeping them on track is Lee Mamadou.
When I was a child, I would watch films
of the future. This is what it looked like in the movies.
This is science fiction.
Yeah, at that time, it was science fiction, it was a kind of dream.
But now, the dream has become reality.
I like them. Yeah, me too.
But they scare me.
That one?
It's looking at me funny.
Yeah. But, it doesn't do you harm.
I don't want to be the first victim of the robot.
No, you will never be the first victim. Don't worry.
Thankfully, the robots are being controlled from a central computer.
The moving squares are the robots?
Yeah. Why are some blue?
They are blue because they are on mission.
They are doing their work.
So, a green one is on its way to a mission?
Yeah. A blue one has a mission?
Yeah. Why are some red?
It has a problem. VOICEOVER: And when there's a problem,
men on tricycles ride to the rescue.
So, you have all this technology,
you have space age robots and they are fixed by men on tricycles.
I find that very comforting.
From this distribution centre,
1,100 tonnes of pasta are sent out every day.
65% of it is exported.
Enough heads to the UK to make 30 million plates of pasta.
The rest travels to 120 countries across all seven continents.
This place is amazing.
I mean, look around. They've got state-of-the-art technology,
they've got enormous yellow robots moving boxes around,
they export all over the globe.
And what is it?
It is a simple mixture of semolina and water.
Isn't that amazing?
Arrivederci.
After 14 hours of processing,
my spaghetti is making its way out into the world
and onto the shelves of a shop near you.
Next time, we'll take you inside Europe's biggest biscuit factory...
It's a constant waterfall of chocolate biscuits.
That makes 18 million biscuits every 24 hours.
We'll reveal the technology behind the chocolate digestive.
Oh, my word! Who designs this stuff?
And Cherry's making a very expensive biscuit-cutter from thousands of
pounds worth of bronze.
It's a thing of beauty.