March 10, 2004, New York Times

Taking the Artisan Out of Artisanal
By JULIA MOSKIN


PORTLAND, Me.

JIM AMARAL has had a nice business going since Hannaford Brothers'
supermarket started carrying his handmade breads in 2001. But one
morning last month while his baker shuffled focaccias, scones and
organic whole-wheat breads into the soapstone oven Mr. Amaral built in
a corner of the Hannaford store, Hannaford employees were pulling racks
of sourdough rounds and baguettes from industrial steel ovens nearby.

Those loaves seemed as crusty and aromatic as Mr. Amaral's handmade
breads. The hands that made them, though, were in a factory in New
Jersey, where the bread was partly baked and flash frozen in a process
called parbaking. Days, weeks or perhaps months ago, the frozen bread
was shipped to Hannaford's. This morning, a few minutes in the steel
ovens produced bread to order.

Over the last four years, a few big parbaking companies have brought
supermarket shoppers around the country so-called artisan breads. Sales
of the breads ‹ hand-formed, all-natural, dark-crusted loaves once
found only in small bake shops ‹ rose 10 percent last year, according
to Mintel Consumer Intelligence, a market-research company, even as the
rest of the industry cowered before the low-carb onslaught.

But many bakers say that parbaking creates artisanal bread without the
artisan and that bread makers in several communities have been driven
out of business after supermarkets started selling parbaked loaves.

Mr. Amaral said he has held his own in the face of the competition. But
looking over the massed loaves in Hannaford's bakery department, he
concedes that it has been tough. "Customers really have to run the
gantlet to find our bread," he said. "I believe that they want to buy
local, real artisanal bread. I just hope that they can find it."

What is at stake nationwide is an almost $2 billion slice of the $16
billion bread industry. Last year, sales of artisanal and artisan-style
bread in supermarkets and big chains nationwide grew faster than any
other part of the bread business: four times faster than the business
as a whole, and almost 20 times faster than white bread, according to
Mintel. (Bread sales have not fallen in the face of low-carb eating,
but they have leveled off.)

Looking for a walnut-rosemary boule in Honolulu? Ralph's, a
supermarket, probably baked some this morning. Kalamata olive bread in
Kalamazoo? Try Harding's, which can bake a fresh loaf while you finish
shopping. Costco stores bake ciabattas and crusty raisin-walnut loaves.

"Foccacia, levain, ciabatta, ficelles ‹ 10 years ago, who knew what a
ficelle was?" said Sue Brooks, who is the bakery director for the King
Kullen chain on Long Island. "Now customers will come to the counter
and say, `You only have baguettes; what happened to the btards?' "

Parbaking holds benefits for supermarkets and their customers. For the
stores, it means lower costs. Since they bake only what they can sell,
there is less waste. For customers, it means great selection, and they
seem as willing to pay premium prices ‹ as much as $5 a loaf in some
markets ‹ as are customers of artisan-bread shops.

For small artisanal bakers, it means only formidable competition.
"It's going to be a war," predicted Daniel Leader, the owner of the
Hudson Valley bakery Bread Alone and a pioneer in the American
artisanal-bread movement. Peter Reinhardt, who is one of 1,300 members
of the Bread Bakers Guild of America and who has taught bread baking at
Johnson & Wales University's various locations, agreed. "Parbaking is a
major threat," he said. "The term `artisan' is in danger of being
compromised completely." Even the guild has not agreed on a precise
definition of artisanal bread, said Gina Piccolino, the executive
director. All-natural ingredients are a must, she said. The guild has
not taken a stance on parbaking.

Parbaking, pioneered by European baking corporations, was introduced
in the United States by one of the most respected figures in artisanal
baking, Nancy Silverton of La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles, about five
years ago. Others are getting into the game. The most prominent has
been Ecce Panis, a New York artisanal baker, which closed its stores in
2002 and now parbakes exclusively. Concept 2 Bakers in Minneapolis is
expanding its line of parbaked organic breads, Panné Provincio, and
trying to outpace the competition with innovations like btards
flavored with black beans and salsa. Grace Baking, San Francisco's
best-known artisanal bakery, is rolling parbaked Pugliese into the
national market.

Until the advent of large-scale commercial baking in the late 19th
century, all American bread was artisanal: mixed and shaped by hand,
then baked under the eye of a professional baker or home cook. But when
soft, sweet, snow-white commercial bread appeared on grocery shelves in
the 1930's, coarse-grained, handmade loaves lost their appeal. And then
came the Wonder Bread years, when packaged sliced bread became
virtually synonymous with American food.

In the 1970's, the health-food movement enthusiastically embraced whole
grains and home-baked bread, a hallmark of counterculture cuisine. By
the 1990's, artisanal bread was swept up in the wave of gourmet
appreciation that brought extra virgin olive oil, dark-roast coffee and
European cheeses to stores.

The wide appeal of artisanal bread first became clear about 10 years
ago when bakers in many areas persuaded supermarket managers to stock
their products.

Ms. Silverton of La Brea first tried parbaking for the Southern
California market four years ago. In 2001, she sold 80 percent of her
company to an Irish food and agribusiness conglomerate, IAWS, in a $79
million deal.

Ms. Silverton, whose bread is sold in 2,500 stores around the country,
said parbaked La Brea bread is "exactly the same product" as the loaves
she still bakes daily at the original bakery, on La Brea Boulevard. She
insists that mass-produced parbaked bread is not a threat to local
artisanal bakers. "The more good bread there is, the better it is for
everyone," she said. "And especially for people who live far away from
an artisan bakery, which, lets face it, is most Americans."

Jesse Matz, who buys La Brea bread "almost daily" at the Kroger store
in Mount Vernon, Ohio, said that he was ecstatic when it arrived on the
shelf. "I used to buy the supermarket-brand baguette," Mr. Matz said,
"but I noticed that it had corn syrup and chemicals in it. This bread
is natural, and you can taste it."

With enormous labor cuts in the American supermarket industry,
parbaked bread is a godsend for bakery managers like Sue Brooks of King
Kullen, whose in-store bakeries ‹ a must-have for big, upscale markets
‹ are staffed by rotating part-timers. "They're not exactly artisan
bakers," Ms. Brooks said. But they can follow the printed instructions
supplied by Ecce Panis, and replenish the racks all day: a convenience
that fresh-baked bread does not offer.

"The ease of parbaked is really phenomenal," said Peter Franklin, a
bread industry consultant. "I don't see how anyone will be able to
compete with it."

Fran Scibelli, owner of the now-closed Metropolitan Bakery in
Charlotte, N.C., said she could not. Harris Teeter, a 30-store chain in
the area, bought about $10,000 worth of bread from Metropolitan every
week for five years. In 2003, after the chain started selling La Brea
bread, Harris Teeter dropped her product. "My bread really was fresh,"
she said. "But that parbaked stuff comes right out of the oven. It
looks gorgeous, if they do it right. And the sign on it doesn't say
freshly browned, or freshly baked off. It says freshly baked."

Eli Zabar, the owner of the New York-based Eli's Bread, bakes fresh
bread for hundreds of supermarkets in the New York metropolitan region.
He said parbaked bread is too subject to mishandling by supermarket
employees. "If they let the bread thaw out at all," he said, "forget
it, you'd be better off with white bread in a package."

Judah Zweiter, director of sales for Eli's Bread, is less dismissive:
"Parbaked bread has already had a direct impact not just on us but on
every bakery in America. We're all going to have to figure out how to
jump on the bandwagon, or it'll run over us."

Mr. Leader of Bread Alone said he is not jumping on the bandwagon now
‹ or ever. "With all due respect," he said, "bread that's mixed, shaped
and baked in a factory, untouched by human hands, is not artisan bread.
That's not the bread I want to make."

To set his product apart, Mr. Leader has had his bread certified as
organic and has recently redesigned all his packaging. For his Borealis
Breads, Jim Amaral has applied for organic certification, passes out
recipe cards with pictures of the farmers who grow his wheat, and, he
said, constantly harangues customers about the value of local,
sustainable products.

But do American consumers care about the distinction between artisanal
and artisan-style bread?

Even purists like Mr. Leader concede that the quality of parbaked
bread can be excellent.

One recent morning, Lawrence Blake pushed his cart past the Ecce Panis
and store-brand baguettes at Hannaford's market and pulled a Borealis
baguette from Mr. Amaral's basket. "This bread tastes like something,"
said Mr. Blake, who had taken the ferry in from his home on Peaks
Island in Casco Bay. Gesturing to the rest of the bakery department, he
said, "Most of it tastes like nothing."

Copyright 2004*The New York Times Company

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.)

--
To reply, substitute .net for .invalid in address, i.e., darrell.usenet2 (at)
telus.net

Darrell Greenwood wrote:
>
> March 10, 2004, New York Times
>
> Taking the Artisan Out of Artisanal
> By JULIA MOSKIN
>
>
>
Thanks, Darrell, for the heads up.

It looks like the beginning of the end of the trend towards
artisnal bakeries. It is ending before it even got out here in
the hinterlands. There are days that I would gladly pay up for a
good loaf of bread made by someone else. Days when the freezer
is devoid of my bread and my time or energy is at the same state.

In the long run, the fad of par baked bread probably won't last.
The companies will consolidate and then hire bright youg people
with Masters in Buiness Administration who will in turn hire
"cost engineers" to take cost out of the products. That will
start the decline of quality and eventually provide a niche once
again for local artisnal bakers.

Unfortunately, the interim may last longer than I will.

Regards,

Charles
--
Charles Perry
Reply to:

** A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand **

In rec.food.sourdough Charles Perry wrote:
> DARRELL Greenwood wrote:
>
>> Taking the Artisan Out of Artisanal
>> By JULIA MOSKIN
>
> It looks like the beginning of the end of the trend towards
> artisnal bakeries.

Actually, according to a companion (sidebar) article, it will depend
on the good taste of the consumer,

Original article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/10/di...BREA.html?8dpc

Sidebar article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/10/dining/10BTAS.html

One must register with the nytimes web site in order to access
these articles. It's free, and so far, after 5 years, they haven't
sent me any unsolicited email.

--
Jeff Sheinberg
for email addr: remove "l1." and change ".invalid" to ".net"

Jeff Sheinberg wrote:
>
>
> ...Actually,... it will depend
> on the good taste of the consumer,
>

We can hope that , in the larger cities anyway, that there will
be enough people with the taste and pocketbook to support good
artisnal bakeries.

I have observed in the food business, that often that last ten
percent that seperates the truly great product from the rest can
take 90 percent of the time and effort as well as 90 percent of
the cost.

The artisan business model allows the creator to make the
decisions according to his view of what is best. If the pool of
customers that appreciate and buy his efforts is big enough the
business can flourish while selling a better product at a higher
price. This is almost impossible in a corporate business
structure.

In the large corporate model, There is always extreme pressure
to take cost out of the product. For one thing you are trying to
appeal to a larger mass market. And, for another, what other
justification is there for the existance of the management
class. Often the quality of bread or other food is the
cummlative result of many small decisions. Cutting corners one
small step at a time may lower quality in such small increments
that it can not be discerned from step to step. It will add up.

The best example of a corporate rolling incremental food disaster
that I can think of is Chicken Mcnuggets. Over the space of a
decade or more that product went from breaded chunks of chicken
breast that were quite good, for what they were, to something
unfit for this humans consumption. One cost saving step at a
time, they devolved from what appeared to be chunks of whole
muscle meat to a bleached emulsion of skin, gristle, connective
tissue, various binders and possibly some meat. From the taste
there could have been feathers included too, for all I know.
Really awful stuff the last time I tasted them a few years ago.

I fear that similar things will happen to the "brown and serve"
bread wholesalers when they are consolidated into large corporate
entities. After all, no one expects gourmet taste from something
in a Wonder Bread wrapper.

Now, I am aware that cheap food provides good nutrition for
millions in this country and really is a blessing for those with
limited means and the rest of us too. Also, I admitt that taste
is just a matter of opinion. However, to the extent that mass
marketed "artisnal" bread drives the real thing and therefore
choice out of the market, It is an unhappy prospect.

Regards,

Charles

--
Charles Perry
Reply to:

** A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand **

"Charles Perry" > wrote in message
...
snip>
> The best example of a corporate rolling incremental food disaster
> that I can think of is Chicken Mcnuggets. Over the space of a
> decade or more that product went from breaded chunks of chicken
> breast that were quite good, for what they were, to something
> unfit for this humans consumption. One cost saving step at a
> time, they devolved from what appeared to be chunks of whole
> muscle meat to a bleached emulsion of skin, gristle, connective
> tissue, various binders and possibly some meat. From the taste
> there could have been feathers included too, for all I know.
> Really awful stuff the last time I tasted them a few years ago.

Oh, yum! Thanks for that. I don't eat them, but that description pretty
much took care of an appetite for anything.

> I fear that similar things will happen to the "brown and serve"
> bread wholesalers when they are consolidated into large corporate
> entities. After all, no one expects gourmet taste from something
> in a Wonder Bread wrapper.

snip

And the above is what will happen. All excellent products are coveted by
the big corporations and you really can't condemn the small to medium label
owner for selling out for the really big bucks. The big guys keep the label
and the changes are small at first, incremental as you said, until there is
nothing left of the good stuff. But bread from the La Brea Bakery will end
up being sold in China as a result of mass marketing.

Janet

On 3/12/04 3:37 PM, "Janet Bostwick" > wrote:

>
> "Charles Perry" > wrote in message
> ...
> snip>
>> The best example of a corporate rolling incremental food disaster
>> that I can think of is Chicken Mcnuggets. Over the space of a
>> decade or more that product went from breaded chunks of chicken
>> breast that were quite good, for what they were, to something
>> unfit for this humans consumption. One cost saving step at a
>> time, they devolved from what appeared to be chunks of whole
>> muscle meat to a bleached emulsion of skin, gristle, connective
>> tissue, various binders and possibly some meat. From the taste
>> there could have been feathers included too, for all I know.
>> Really awful stuff the last time I tasted them a few years ago.
>
> Oh, yum! Thanks for that. I don't eat them, but that description pretty
> much took care of an appetite for anything.
>
>> I fear that similar things will happen to the "brown and serve"
>> bread wholesalers when they are consolidated into large corporate
>> entities. After all, no one expects gourmet taste from something
>> in a Wonder Bread wrapper.
>
> snip
>
> And the above is what will happen. All excellent products are coveted by
> the big corporations and you really can't condemn the small to medium label
> owner for selling out for the really big bucks. The big guys keep the label
> and the changes are small at first, incremental as you said, until there is
> nothing left of the good stuff. But bread from the La Brea Bakery will end
> up being sold in China as a result of mass marketing.
>
> Janet
>
>
So once again we have proved the French are right. Our cultural aspirations
are reduced to lucre. Are we structurally unable to protect our emerging
bread renaissance? Would Poilane have embraced par-baked or "brown and
serve" bread? I don't think so. But then, I am still amazed at the dead zone
in the grocery store, Yes... I'm talking about aisles 1-15.

Remember to dedicate your next loaf to Nancy Silverton. She's moved on to
brioche.

Will
> _______________________________________________
> rec.food.sourdough mailing list
>
> http://www.otherwhen.com/mailman/lis...food.sourdough

Charles Perry wrote:

> The best example of a corporate rolling incremental food disaster
> that I can think of is Chicken Mcnuggets. ... One cost saving step at a
> time, they devolved from what appeared to be chunks of whole
> muscle meat to a bleached emulsion of skin, gristle, connective
> tissue, various binders and possibly some meat. From the taste
> there could have been feathers included too, for all I know.

Chicken lips, too.

> Really awful stuff the last time I tasted them a few years ago.

But there's a consumer movement swinging the pendulum back around to
"all white meat chicken." Which is different from "100% white meat
chicken" but it's an improvement and of course, what I question is the
sodium and fat levels... anyway, while it's in the corporations'
interests to de-educate the consumer until we accept total crap, they
WILL adjust to market demand. Look at the "low-carb" offerings they're
making to jump on the Atkins bandwagon.

> I fear that similar things will happen to the "brown and serve"
> bread wholesalers when they are consolidated into large corporate
> entities. After all, no one expects gourmet taste from something
> in a Wonder Bread wrapper.

It's amazing what they can do with flavoring agents. Totally boggles
the mind. You know that civet cat musk extract* is a key ingredient to
raspberry flavoring?

*anyone who's had a house cat with impacted anal glands knows about
this.

> Now, I am aware that cheap food provides good nutrition for
> millions in this country and really is a blessing for those with
> limited means and the rest of us too.

Cheap food, yes. Fast food, no. Not *good* nutrition. Much too high
in saturated fat. Much too high in sodium, as well as sugar. Certainly
will keep body and soul together, but at a high cost down the road. On
the other hand, I know a couple with a macropsychotic diet and their
infant was showing signs of "failure to thrive." Underweight,
uncoordinated for his age, just not where he should be, even at the
lower ends of the bell curve. When the pediatrician finally inquired as
to what they were feeding him, he firmly stated, "I don't care about
your beliefs. Take this kid to McDonald's twice a week, he needs the
saturated fat for nerve and brain development!"

B/