instore - November 2017 - 38

special report

Dakdouk, a native of Venezuela who has been baking since the age
of 12, created the Lactobacillus by juicing grapes in cheesecloth and
adding flour and water twice a day until a yeast was created. The
mother is still fed daily. "This is the essence of the bread," Macy says.
"It's what give it the flavor."
Larder uses mechanical mixers and sometimes utilizes dividers and
portioners, but all of its bread products are hand-shaped and hand-cut.
"We think it's important to maintain the ingredient quality and keep
our integrity by making sure everything is hand-finished," Macy says.
"That's where we're at and it's working."
Larder gets a majority of its flour from King Arthur in Norwich, Vermont.
After deciding to drop its organic certification at the end of 2014, Macy
says Larder looked for a supplier that would deliver the high-quality
flour the company was used to and could do so with weekly truckloads. King Arthur fit the bill and continues as a partner today.
The company also recently started working with Community Grains in
the San Francisco Bay area. Community Grains grows, mills and distributes from Northern California its heirloom varietal identity-preserved
wheat. "This flour works very different than regular flour," Macy says.
"The coarseness of it is different. The doughs are very, very wet so you
have to have somebody very skilled who knows how to do it."
The high hydration levels of artisan bread mean not just any water will
do for Larder. In fact, when Dakdouk came on board - he joined chef

and restaurateur Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne - one of his nonnegotiables was the installation of a high-end, state-of-the-art water
filtration system.
"It's a huge importance. Most breads are, as an industry standard, somewhere around 40 percent hydration," Macy says. "Our breads are 70 to
100 percent hydration. So, at times, if we have 100 pounds of flour, we
need 100 pounds of water."
The combination of using a Lactobacillus and high-hydration doughs
and doing a lot of work by hand increases the need for knowledgeable
employees. Larder is now over the 50-employee mark and runs its
facility 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
"If you're making bread with a yeast like that - with a living yeast
versus a commercial yeast - it is a very hard product to make," Macy
says. "You can't just walk in the door and make a loaf. There is technique, you have to know when the dough is ready, it depends on the
weather outside, the humidity, what else is happening in the bakery.
There are so many elements to it that it really comes down to experience. We're sort of forced into maintaining quality that way. We have to
know how to work with it that way."
Larder got its start in restaurants, namely those of Goin and Styne.
After Dakdouk began baking bread for their shops, word got out. Soon,
other chefs wanted the bread and there was enough demand to start
selling wholesale.

challenges
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Online sales. Artisan bread, more than most
retail products, benefits from an instore sensory
experience. As more shopping transitions from
bricks-and-mortar to digital, those benefits will be
harder to convey.

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38 * NOVEMBER 2017 * instore

Carbs. Artisan bread has many health benefits,
but it's still in the carb category, which makes it a
hurdle for many consumers in the post-Atkins Diet
era. Gluten-free also doesn't help, though many in
the industry think that trend has peaked.

Fortunately - for consumers and
artisan bakers - that's in the past.
"It has been exciting to see how
the industry has grown as a
whole," Macy says. "It's developed
so much that it's now become
more of a standard. People are
smelling the bread when they
open it and before they taste it.
They're appreciating the flavor.
That's cool to see."

MEDITERRA

Labor. Labor costs are becoming a bigger
challenge for retailers every year, making it harder
to find and train associates who can manage an
instore artisan bread program.

Expanding while maintaining standards.
Beyond a certain point, growing means
automating. Figuring out how much you can
automate and still be artisan isn't always easy.

It wasn't easy at first. "When we
first came to market, the artisan
bread boom hadn't quite started
yet and I think we had some
adversity when we went around
to do tastings because our bread
had flavor," Macy says. "People
were so used to having bread that
just tasted like air and water."

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