Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - December 2008 - (Page 23)

Market Trends Artisan or Artistic License? There’s nothing wrong with a little artistic license when it comes to producing artisan breads and rolls. Besides, who wants to be boring doing the same old breads that bakers have been producing for hundreds of years? That’s why companies like Lantmannen Unibake USA have broadened the deﬁnition of artisan by creating value-added Old World products to transform ordinary products into extraordinary ones. For breakfast, the company offers a Luau bread ﬁlled with pineapple and coconut or a Swiss muesli bread with a cornucopia of cranberries, raisins, apricots and dates that takes all natural to a whole new level. For lunch or dinner, Lantmannen may offer a signature ciabatta topped with a variety of cheese. “Come on. You’re talking about ﬂour, water, a little bit of salt and yeast. What more can you do?” says Scott Kolinski, president of the company’s U.S. operations, based in Lisle, Ill. “What we’re doing is taking a basic recipe and trying to twist it around a bit to please a certain customer, and from there, it has other applications as well.” Consumers also want to see artisan-style breads, but with a truer sliced shape, notes Marshall Kruse, plant ﬁnancial manager at San Luis Sourdough, San Luis Obispo, Calif. “We do introduce new shapes from time to time to help with customer demand,” he says. “One of the newer shapes has been a square shape. That’s easier for the toaster and to make a consistent sandwich size for delis.” For cost-conscious foodservice operators who may be struggling because of today’s soft economy, North Bergen, N.J.-based Hudson Bread now offers 0.5-oz. rolls that allow chefs to provide a variety of products that don’t ﬁll up diners before they order their meals. “We ordered some new equipment, and we started to push the mini-half roll,” says Ray Million, vice president of operations and head of research and development. “We hope it does two things. It will give us volume of production and allows the restaurant chefs to provide bread to the table but not so much.” Shannon Talty, owner of Olde Hearth Bread Co. in Casselberry, Fla., also sees the shape of artisan bread changing in the future. For panini and other press sandwiches, some chefs are buying a thick-sliced, oversized loaf while others want rolls that resemble a wider, ﬂatter sub. Although they’re not artisan breads, ﬂatbreads and even wraps now come in various shapes and sizes. “We make three different versions of our ﬂatbreads. They seem to be widely popular,” he says. “Unlike say ciabatta, which was the darling for years and is still very popular, [it does] not have that fresh new idea feel that restaurateurs place on ﬂatbreads now.” When it comes to bread, an artistic license is the rule and no longer the exception. Photo courtesy of The Wheat Foods Council “It has become a marketing tag that has lost its identity,” Talty says. “My interpretation is that artisan baking implies a return to the practices of using methods that focus on hand development and an eye toward buying the best ingredients and producing products from scratch.” Philip Shaw, president of Toronto-based ACE Bakery, believes that what consumers perceive as “artisan” describes the product’s attributes such as an open-hole structure, a richness in taste and a high contrast between the crust and interior crumb texture. “At ACE, we use natural starters, low temperature and long fermentation times, and we hand shape most of our breads,” Shaw explains. “I don’t want to get caught up in the debate on who is and who isn’t meeting the measure of being a ‘true artisan bakery.’ Let someone else be the judge. For me, it’s so much more about the quality of the bread and less about the process in which it is made. “There are bakers whose process is truer to the deﬁnition of an artisan bakery making inferior bread, and there are bakers using more highly automated processes making superior bread,” he adds. “I think the most important thing is not to ﬁxate on preconceived notions about what process makes a better loaf of bread, but rather [to] appreciate that ultimately you are going to put it in your mouth and eat it. I would rather focus on the consumer’s experience rather than on the process.” Fresh Versus Frozen Purists, Talty notes, have even debated whether parbaked products can be called “artisan.” However, because most artisan breads contain no preservatives, a short shelf life becomes a consistent issue. Freezing, many bakers argue, is a reasonable compromise. Talty’s Olde Hearth Bread’s top-selling products range from Challah, sourdough, Cuban and French breads to ciabatta, Cuban and ﬂatbreads. They’re distributed fresh everyday, but the realities of the marketplace and the economies surrounding distribution have Talty considering frozen as an option. “We are researching getting into frozen parbaked but have not rolled out that product line yet,” Talty says. On the other hand, Lantmannen’s Hoffman believes that parbaked is the best format for the U.S. market. Chefs can simply heat and refresh to give consumers a warm product to start off a meal. However, he is seeing a greater move toward easier-to-use products among foodservice and in-store Continued on page 24 www.snackandbakery.com DECEMBER 2008 - Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery 23 http://www.snackandbakery.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - December 2008

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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