September
== 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 Jacksons the Bakers -
Winner The Village Bakery
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.
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.
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.
== 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.
Want to get a job? Take up baking
Pecan Deluxe launches red velvet cake pieces
Cake that dispenses wine created in Nottingham