Hobbs House Bakery has made its central bakery nut-free – which has meant calling time on almond croissant production.
While the business will continue to use nuts in products baked fresh at its four shops across the Cotswolds and Bristol, the 30,000 sq ft main bakery in Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, is now entirely nut free. The site, which has recently expanded from 20,000 sq ft, employs 154 staff and bakes around 200,000 products a week.
The nut-free move is aimed particularly at the business’s online and wholesale customers. The bakery had been keen to be nut free at the beginning of September as some of the demand was from school kitchens and it wanted to make sure its products could be on their menus for the new school year.
“We couldn’t have done it without our amazing team who formed a working group and have been helping us develop new processes and systems since the beginning of the year,” said Hobbs House.
Over the past year the business has removed all nuts from bread, while its burger buns have been topped with linseed instead of sesame for around five years.
“One of our key goals as a business is to make real bread accessible to as many people in our communities as possible,” added Hobbs House. “Making this change felt like the natural next step on that journey.”
One casualty of the change has been the almond croissant, which has been produced by the business for around 25 years and sold about 2,000 units a week. This has been replaced with a Granola Crunch Croissant developed by NPD manager Rebecca Levell.
The retail shops were used to trial different recipes and get feedback from customers, with this information helping shape the development process.
A lot of research went into what could be used as an almond alternative to make the frangipane, with semolina coming out a clear winner. Different toppings were trialled, and it was agreed that the texture and flavour from seeds and oats were a good alternative. The recipe uses a ’very small amount’ of natural almond flavouring to give a hint of nutty flavour without the allergen.
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