Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | S | Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery

Breadology: bread is one of the oldest recorded baked foods, dating back to the Stone Age. Since then, artisan bakers have revived the staff of life with premium, quality ingredients for the modern bread-eater.

Article Excerpt
Bread added sustenance to the caveman's saber tooth cat-and-wooly-mammoth-meat-only diet. Egyptians carried it with them into the afterlife. Romans even bowed down to it in their temples ... well, maybe not, but they did have hearth ovens constructed within their holy places, and they organized the world's first Baker's Guild, which still is alive and well today.

Bread has been loafing around since the Stone Age and, lately, it is enjoying a renaissance in the bread aisle with the rise of whole grains, the fall of plain old white and a renewed interest in artisan--traditional or Old-World style--baking.

Consumers slowly are embracing the newly popular grainy loaves, and for those who aren't quite convinced that grain is good, various organizations, foodservice operators and manufacturers are providing novice bread-eaters and bread-lovers alike with a breaducation fit for the masses.

Bready or Not

As we find ourselves nearing the end of the year 2006 B.E (Bread-Eating), more consumers are breaking bread for their health and, at the same time, discovering that the staff of life has undergone a tasty evolution since man walked on all fours.

Experimentation with fresh, global tastes, along with a love bordering on obsession with foodstuff imported from abroad, is driving biped breadivores to seek out premium bread with innovative toppings and flavors--fresh herbs, sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, sunflower seeds, olives, you name it--that in addition to promising a Tour de France for your mouth, also tout convenience.

In the bread-aisle arena, category leader Pepperidge Farm recently introduced Hearth Fired Artisan Breads, which, according to the Norwalk, Conn.-based company, are made in "the simple, time-honored way, with quality flours and other all-natural ingredients."

Since each loaf is par-baked and then flash-frozen,...