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The Essential Baking Co. also now reaches a national audience with its Take & Bake line of artisan sourdough batards and baguettes, which get a notable 190-day ambient shelf life thanks to modified-atmosphere packaging (MAP).

Passion underpins the dedication to invest the time and resources required to bake bread with unmistakable Old World artisan flavor, appearance and texture. And strong business sense leads such bakers to judiciously capitalize on the technological tools available to help bring those truly artisan breads to a wide customer base without compromising craftsmanship.

BreadPartners, Inc. Paste Product range, Superior, offers an alternative to running a scratch formula, which involves scaling a minimum of 5-7 ingredients. 

As the artisan bread movement continues to gain momentum across the U.S., one of its most-ancient forms—sourdough—is garnering more-widespread attention.

Puratos recently launched two new sourdough starters.

Formulating products with the ever-increasing demands of today’s marketplace is no easy task.

Clean label continues to drive innovation, and when innovations can also help bakers increase production efficiency and save money, everyone wins. 

In May’s column, we discussed the process of fermentation. Bakers put that wheel into motion once they combine water, flour and yeast—either commercial or wild—in a bowl and start to mix. However, there are numerous controls to initiate controlled fermentation as opposed to a process that under- or over-ferments yeasted products.

There are no secret ingredients or master recipes in great bread baking. Successful artisan bread baking is largely focused on controlling fermentation. Controlled fermentation accounts for greater dough strength, longer product shelf life due to acidification and, more importantly for your customer, complex flavor.

During research and development, bakers and snack producers face formulation hurdles on a daily basis. Luckily, functional ingredients like fats, oils, dough conditioners and egg replacers can help them solve a host of common challenges.