New Bakery Product of the Year 2022 finalists revealed

An innovative loaf, a healthier chocolate snack and a vegan-friendly lemon tart have been selected as finalists for New Bakery Product of the Year 2022.

Sponsored by TraceGains, this category celebrates innovative and marketable bakery products released during the last year.

Here are the finalists for New Bakery Product of the Year 2022:

Chocolate and the Whole Orange Sourdough

The formulation for this lovely looking loaf came about as a solution to the high orange waste produced by the juicing machine at The Danish Bakery’s café in Cardiff. To process the oranges, the bakery ferments them in water for three to four days to extract the natural yeast in the skin.

When the water starts to bubble it is mixed with flour to form a Levain preferment in lieu of a sourdough starter. The remainder of the oranges are then pulsed whole and added as an inclusion to the white dough alongside dark chocolate chips used to balance the slightly bitter taste of the pith. The judges praised the sustainability of the product and its on-trend flavour.

Rootles Milk Chocolate

Rootles Milk Chocolate, made by Luke Evans Bakery, is positioned as a healthier alternative snack that contains over 35% vegetables in a combination of carrot and sweet potato. The root vegetables help to bring the sugar and fat content down so a pack of three fingers contains only 121 calories. The innovative approach of combining vegetables and chocolate also helped the bakery to secure development funding from associations working to tackle childhood obesity.

The snack is already available in Asda and Spar, on Amazon, and from independent food shops. “Unconventional and delicious,” said the judges. “It smells like a chocolate biscuit and is nice and crunchy.”

We Love Cake, When Life gives you lemons, Lemon Tart

This product, made by Bells of Lazonby, is gluten, wheat, and milk free as well as vegan. The sweet pastry case uses a reduced sugar recipe to deliver a crisp pastry throughout the thaw and service process and is filled with a lemon-flavoured ganache using creamy diary-free white chocolate.

The tart is packaged as a single wrapped unit targeted at the wholesale market and the ‘grab and go’ customer as well as for serving with some extra personalisation within the dine-in sector. “The tart has a really zingy flavour, with well-baked crisp pastry,” said the judges. “It’s missing nothing against a traditional lemon tart.”