l Baking Industry Awards

March 3, 1933: catchphrase competition

This week's "Can't blame them for trying" award goes to The Really Sensible Trading Company, which has predicted nothing short of a revolution in the world of cafetières.

How do you transform obese folk into "ordinary" people? It's obvious, duh! Make them run a half marathon every day. If only Dr Allinson had made his suggestion more forcefully a century ago...

"She knows she has messed up bad"

In a recent BB we slavered over the wonders of authentic Neapolitan pizza. Well, the pizzas from Naples may be a delight, but the city's bread will slowly kill you.

Adding nuts to products can be an expensive business. So while prices escalate, a cheaper option than some of the exotic tree nuts could be using peanuts. Even cheaper than whole nuts, peanut flour was recently launched into the UK with a variety of US-style applications touted. It can be used as a healthy, protein-rich ingredient in a range of goods, including cereal bars, cakes, biscuits and confectionery, diet and nutritional bars. It can also control the fat migration of the high fat centres, as well as enhance flavour and texture. Extracted from the oil of roasted peanut seed, peanut flour normally contains around 50% protein.

Soaring ingredients prices have been one of the talking points of the baking industry this year. With global demand increasing and speculation pushing prices higher, securing a reliable supply route is more challenging than ever for bakers.

The baking industry has always had a large element of indulgence about it - from cream cakes to doughnuts - but consumers are looking for healthier options when it comes to their daily bread. The focus used to be on what can be taken out of bakery products to make them more healthy - lower fat and salt content for example. But now it has shifted to what additional ingredients can go in.

3663 - named because it spells 'food' on a phone (unless you're using a Blackberry, in which case it spells 'rffr') - has fast become one of the UK's foodservice giants since its rebirth out of the ailing Booker in 1999.

Even a tiny slice of the government's estimated £2bn spend on food and catering in the public sector provides a mouth- watering prospect for bakery and ingredients suppliers.

John Foster is MD of Fosters Bakery, based in Barnsley, south Yorkshire, which supplies fresh and frozen products into major retailers, airlines and caterers

Apples are almost certainly one of the first fruits to have been cultivated, although their origins are not clear. There are thought to be over 7,000 varieties of apple worldwide. The National Fruit Collection, at Brogdale Farm in Kent, has over 2,000 varieties in its collection and is thought to be the most comprehensive in the world.

How refreshing to find an easy-to-navigate website (www.thebakeryschool.com) that has been developed by two experienced baking industry giants!

Pantheon has launched a new kettle to heat and store soups and casseroles. The PSK Soup Kettle heats up to 10 litres of liquid-based products, such as soup, sauces and casseroles. It then maintains them at the optimum serving temperature. The operator can alter the temperature dial, depending on usage.

Puff pastry supplier Jus-Rol has launched 'Shape It Up', whereby bakers can source ideas and recipes using Jus-Rol's three different pastry shapes - oval, round and square. Jus-Rol's Puff Pastry Shapes are pre-rolled, cut to size and defrost in a few minutes. Recipes include Cheese, Tomato & Bacon Wraps, Chicken Spinach & Red Pepper Open Tarts and Goat's Cheese & Aubergine Windmills.

Planglow has launched its new Deli Tickets, suitable for salad bars, deli counters and shelf edges. They are pre-laminated and no cutting is required; they can also be used repeatedly.

Premier Foods is launching limited-edition Mr Kipling Fiendish Fancies for Halloween. A variation on its popular French Fancy, the new cakes will have orange and black icing and Halloween-themed packaging.

La Pizza Company is offering its frozen part-baked Tear & Share Garlic Bread in new flavours. They are now available in cajun garlic, parmesan & black pepper and roasted red onion varieties, and are made using real garlic butter.

Furniss of Cornwall is now selling its Cornish Fairings biscuits in France. The biscuits will be hitting the shelves of Le Comptoir Irlandais stores across the country in its three varieties - orange and lemon, apple and cinnamon and stem ginger and honey - alongside its Cornish Gingerbread.

A new Breakfast Energy Muffin has been launched by Dawn Foods, aimed at the café sector. The American-style bakery product is made with carrots, raisins, pumpkin seeds, dates, apricots and cranberries, to provide breakfast on-the-go or a coffee accompaniment.

Winner BB's Coffee & Muffins

Winner Tesco, Meltham Lane,

Winner Leanne Tang

Winner Crantock Bakery

Winner Jacksons the Bakers -

Winner Eurobuns - Skinny

Winner Jane Hatton

Winner WC Rowe

Winner The Village Bakery

Winner Piero Scacco

The British Baker Award for Special Achievement

This year's winner of the British Baker Award for Special Achievement, John Slattery, is in good company, with names such as baker Charles Geary, cereals scientist Stan Cauvain and bakery tutor Jean Grieves.

A very big

The National Association of Master Bakers (NA), supported by The Worshipful Company of Bakers, is running a seminar for newly appointed supervisors and managers on Wednesday 8 October 2008, at the Best Western Midland hotel, Derby. It will be delivered by Simon Johnstone, whose seminars have been reported as being "enlightening, amusing and very interesting".

Costa Coffee's sales have continued to rise over the past six months - up 23.6% in the half-year to 14 August. In its interim statement, parent company Whitbread said the brand had demonstrated "good growth", with like-for-likes up 3.7%.

The retail price of packaged croissants has almost doubled in the last six months, according to the latest price data from Verdict Research.

Organic winners

Dawn Foods will be sponsoring British Baker's Baking Industry Summit 2008. This year's summit, to be held in London on the 27 November, will cover all the essentials of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), with top speakers including Tesco, Asda and Greggs. "The summit looks set to stimulate interesting debates and we are pleased to be able to support this important forum," said Dave Roberts, Dawn Foods' UK national accounts controller.

The independent coffee shop market is far from saturated, with plenty of potential for future growth, according to the latest research from Allegra Strategies.

Enzyme price rise

l Baking Industry Awards 2008

An American newspaper is qualifying for a monument from the housewives of the world. It has discovered, or calculated, that, in the course of a year, the average mother of four or five children makes the 'equivalent' of 1,095 loaves of bread... 50 cakes and 750 pies. She also prepares meat which, if assembled, would make one or two cows and about six pigs, peels 5,100 potatoes, makes 1,200 beds and dusts on average 7,500 chairs every twelve-month. This sort of stuff makes one hungry for statistics. Cannot some baker come up with some intensely human story of the number of times a year his nose begins to itch as soon as he plunges his hand into the dough? If the trade should ever decide to answer its plague of critics, a wagon-load of distressing statistics of this kind would make the public weep oceans of tears. Really, bakers are a most unenterprising lot of fellows.

News agency AFP has reported that thousands of copies of a Swedish food magazine have had to be recalled, after it inadvertently poisoned some of its readers who followed one of its apple cake recipes.

Since autumn started in August this year, what better time to hear Dr Allinson's reflections on how gloomy weather makes one, well, gloomy.

A piece of very old cake has been sold at auction for a whopping £1,000; though admittedly, the item in question was actually an 8 x 9-inch slice from Charles & Diana's 1981 Royal Wedding cake.

"I'm only baking in a glorified wooden shed. Surely this is not running a business. We have had to stop baking cakes to sell and the council are even quibbling over our tables in the garden on planning grounds." - Civilian Diane Tovey falls foul of North-East Lincolnshire council regs after baking and selling cakes for the RNLI in her garden "Just as Disney's 'High School Musical 3: Senior Year' delivers kids joy and fun mom can feel good about, Sara Lee Soft & Smooth breads give kids the taste they want with the wholegrain nutrition that satisfies parents." - Tim Zimmer, vice-president, Sara Lee Fresh Bakery, strains to link the firm's products with the Disney film, following a marketing tie-in in the US "I have lived on Marmite sandwiches, nothing more, for the last 25 years and am dedicated to the art form that is Marmite sandwich-making. Every sandwich I make is created with love, care and attention to detail." - George Lambert, reported by the Press Association to have built a 12ft stack of Marmite sandwiches in a record-breaking attempt

Despite an almost non-existent summer, it's nearly back to school time. Among other things, this is a time when mums and dads will be forced to face the issue of what they can put in their children's lunchboxes.

Up to 150,000 sewer blockages each year are caused by fats, oils and grease (FOG) being thrown down sinks and drains. The time and expense involved in unblocking drains and subsequent clean-up operations can have an immediate impact on the bottom line.

The icing on a cake can fulfil a number of requirements. It can be used to make a cake more aesthetically pleasing and can pull together the theme of an occasion. It can be used to keep a cake fresh and help products stand out from their competitors. But icing a cake is not always a sweet success.

Cuisine de France's national account manager, Sharon Carney, says that winning the Customer Focus Award, sponsored by BakeMark, at last year's Baking Industry Awards was a triumph for the business - not to mention a great opportunity to meet Joanna Lumley!

In early June, shortly after becoming chief executive of Greggs, Ken McMeikan went to work at one of the bakery retailers' Leeds shops. Rather than reading reports from the comfort of his new office in Newcastle, McMeikan spent his first week pitching in with shop staff, making sandwiches, baking off savouries and working the till.

You may ask yourselves, "Why should I move to quality coffee?" Compare the coffee industry to the wine industry and think back to when the UK drank very little wine - when our knowledge did not extend past drinking Blue Nun. Now, a lot of UK consumers have a basic understanding of different grape varieties and different wine-producing countries. Coffee has the same complexities and the consumer is becoming increasingly aware of the subtle differences.

Coffee shops and cafés are playing a "notable" role in the longer-term trend among consumers for frequent eating out of home, according to new research by Allegra Strategies.

Tom Herbert is a fifth-generation baker and director of Hobbs House Bakery, a multi-award-winning craft bakery based in south Gloucestershire

There are many varieties of plum available. Some are sweet and are suitable as dessert fruits and others are tart and can be made into jams or chutneys. Either type can be used for baking. There is a variety of skin colours from green and yellow to dark red and purple.

by bakery consultant Wayne Caddy

German bakery machine manufacturer Fritsch has revealed the latest addition to its range - the Fritsch Laminator 300. It has been designed for bakers who require automation and better quality in the production of dough sheets.

A new food hygiene system has been launched in the UK by Applied Technology, a subsidiary of retail lighting company Bäro Lighting.

Italian machinery company Alimec recently opened its factory doors to show pizza manufacturers an in-house demonstration of its new Pizza Topping and Make-Up line.

Heinz has launched a five-strong range of premium soups in response to caterers' growing interest in health, well-being and nutritional quality.

Ginger Sensation is the new cake mix from ingredients manufacturer Macphie. The latest addition to the Sensations cake mix range, it has a warm spicy flavour and contains pieces of crystalised ginger. It is free from artificial colours, flavours, preservatives or hydrogenated fats and comes in 12.5kg packs, with only the addition of water and oil necessary.

As part of its on-going expansion programme, Pecan Deluxe has developed the flexibility of its confectionery range so it can be used in baked goods.

Valera has introduced a new range of buffet display units for hot, cold or ambient products.

BakeMark UK has added three new multiseed bread ingredients to its Arkady range - Waldkorn Classic, Waldkorn Krokant and Combicorn Malzsonne.

The Feel Good Drinks Company is launching a new range of soft drinks aimed at kids. The fruity range, called Feel Good Kids, will initially feature Raspberry, Strawberry and Blueberry; Orange, Pineapple and Banana; and Blackcurrant, Apple and Grape varieties.

Percola, a Fairtrade cola drink, has been launched by food and beverage company Food Brands Group. The drink, an extension of its Percol Fairtrade coffee range, is the first Fairtrade cola with no preservatives or artificial colours and will be available in a 500ml bottle.

Irn-Bru maker AG Barr has announced the acquisition of Groupe Rubicon - a UK-based manufacturer and distributor of exotic juice drinks.

They laughed, they clapped and they cheered as retailer Asda's commercial bakery director, Huw Edwards, took to the stage at Birmingham's famous Belfry to host Asda's own internal Bakery of the Year awards.

Subway is set to become the UK's biggest bakery retailer in the New Year if it continues its current rate of growth, pushing Greggs from premier position.

Dave Brooks, chief executive of major own-brand premium cakes supplier Finsbury Food Group, who steered the business into its number two position within the UK cake industry, is to step down from his role with effect from 29 September.

Continued poor weather is prompting fears of a shortage of bread-making wheat, a decline in quality because of falling protein levels and rising bread prices, as only half the harvest has been completed in some areas.

Tesco's executive director of corporate and legal affairs Lucy Neville Rolfe will be giving an insight into the supermarket's corporate social responsibility strategy (CSR) at British Baker's Baking Industry Summit, to be held in London on 27 November.

Online training provider The Bakery School is adding a further module to its 40-module bakery training portfolio. The module, Training Matrix, will go live on 5 September. Designed to support the employer or super-visor, the module will help them to set up a simple matrix system for bakery training, in an easy-to- follow format, enabling the operative to see the progress of the training.

A bakery in Merseyside has become a victim of identity theft. A fraudster, claiming to be connected with Liverpool's artisan bakery and patisserie Satterthwaites, misled hundreds of people into sending money by electronic transfer for concert and festival tickets, which never materialised.

Greggs' chief executive Ken McMeikan has pledged to crack down on wasted food, as he takes the helm of the UK's largest bakery retailer.

Paul Morrow, managing director of British Bakels, has appointed Ian Dobbie as new managing director designate from 1 October. Dobbie, who currently heads up the UK division of Délifrance, takes over full responsibility at Bakels from 1 January.

It's your last chance to get tic-kets for the Baking Industry Awards 2008, to be held at London's Grosvenor House hotel on 15 September.

A £15m relaunch of the Hovis brand - the largest in its history - gets under way this month, after its declining market share contributed to a 23.2% slump in half-year profits to £14.6m at Premier Foods' bakery business.

The baking industry has moved one step closer to establishing a National Skills Academy for Bakery, after a shortlist of academic institutions invited to bid to become the 'network champion' was decided this week.