Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - December 2008 - (Page 22)

Market Trends But Is It Bakers passionately debate about the true deﬁnition of ‘artisan’ bread. They may disagree on fermentation times, whether it must be made by hand and how it needs to be baked, but in the end, like with all art, it comes down to a matter of taste. By Dan Malovany I f Ray Million had it his way, he would make only four types of bread and form them all by hand. “If it were the dream bakery, it would have a wood-ﬁred oven with a mixer, a dough knife and a pair of hands,” he says. “That is, in effect, how you get your best bread.” As vice president of operations and head of research and development for Hudson Bread, North Bergen, N.J., however, Million has to be a realist. Sure, he won’t compromise on fermentation. He won’t budge on giving the dough the time to mature naturally, but he believes that bakers can automate some processes and still make good bread. “I’m willing to work with the equipment that is out there that lends itself to soft dough dividing or separating or rounding,” he adds. “Think about it. You either need 30 people at the end of a table rounding 10,000 loaves of bread, or you have two pieces of equipment and ﬁve people to make an artisan product.” Taking it a step further, Ralph Hoffman, sales manager for Denmark-based Lantmannen Unibake that recently bought Eurobake of St. Petersburg, Fla., describes the word “artisan” as “the most abused word in the baking industry as of late.” Hoffman says the Eurobake operation, which custom develops signature breads primarily for foodservice accounts, relies on a starter brought from Germany plus long fermentation processes and substantial resting times for the dough to produce European-style breads and rolls. The products are then tailored to the American palate, which for breads, has come a long way since the early ‘90s. “At that time, the offering of bread was limited in the U.S. and especially when you look at the Florida market,” says Hoffman, a native of Germany with a European background in culinary arts. “The only thing that was out there was Wonder bread white and Wonder bread not-so-white.” Today, many chefs are trying to satisfy consumers’ yearnings for crusty breads that are European in style but still soft and moist on the inside the way Americans like it. “It’s become a mixture of what the American customer wants and what we as Germans like to see in a bread,” Hoffman says. “We’ve implemented a time-consum- ing process. This is how we develop the ﬂavor in the product.” Lantmannen has more than 30 bakeries, and the Eurobake purchase last April was its ﬁrst venture in the U.S. market. Scott Kolinski, president of Lantmannen’s North American division in Lisle, Ill., stresses that quality artisan breads have a subtle ﬂavor note to them. “I have had the opportunity to taste a lot of bread, both domestically and European products, and our products – even as basic as the baguette – have an outstanding ﬂavor with a nice hint of sourdough note,” Kolinski says. “That ﬂavor proﬁle differentiates our products from some of the larger producers out there.” Speaking for a lot of bakers, Shannon Talty, owner of Olde Hearth Bread Co. in Casselberry, Fla., suggests that many companies call their breads “artisan” when they are clearly not. Olde Hearth Bread products, he notes, are created with a natural yeast starter that’s fermented overnight, rounded by hand and are baked in a Llopis oven, or the modern-day version of the authentic ovens found in the old abbeys of France, Italy and Spain. 22 Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - DECEMBER 2008 www.snackandbakery.com Photo courtesy of ACE Bakery, Doug Bradshaw http://www.snackandbakery.com

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Snack Food &�Wholesale Bakery - December 2008 Contents Editor’s Note Now, That’s Haute! Bigger ‘n’ Better But Is It Art? New Products Branching Out Engineering Management Fits to a T Racing to the Finish The Final Word

Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - December 2008

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