Consumers’ growing interest in artisan breads has caused high-volume wholesale bakers of pan bread and rolls to take notice. Seeing sales potential, some have installed artisan production equipment, while others have purchased established artisan bakeries. But in an unusual turn of events, an upstart artisan wholesaler in Phoenix has incorporated pan bread and rolls into its strategy to penetrate deeper into its existing market.

In 2009, Simply Bread, an award-winning baker of handcrafted bread, rolls and sweegoods, needed larger quarters. So, the company acquired a small wholesaler of bread and rolls sold to foodservice accounts. After moving artisan operations into the plant, bakers feeding sour starters and hand-scoring baguettes began working under the same roof as crews running a high-speed roll line and automated bread make-up equipment.

Bringing on highly automated white and variety bread production required soul searching by Simply Bread’s top management. “Jeff (Yankellow, E.V.P. and co-founder) and I started our business with a shared philosophy as to what we wanted to create, and it did not include industrial baking,” says Harold Back, president and co-founder. “But, as difficult as this was intellectually, the move operationally made perfect sense.  e combination enables us to have more bats to swing at the ball so we can provide customers what they want, not what we want to offer.”

HAD PLANNED TO EXPAND

Since opening Simply Bread in 2006, Back and Yankellow had steadily constructed a client base of upscale food markets and supermarkets, as well as high-end resorts, hotels and restaurants. Early in 2009, the company was operating at capacity and was about to expand the facility, composed of eight buildings that covered about a half block.

“This was to be an interim expansion, knowing that we would grow into larger quarters elsewhere,” Back recalls. The plan included expanding Simply Bread’s fledgling frozen par-baked business, which initially was distributed locally, into the Los Angeles and Las Vegas markets.

But by that time, the economy was turning sour. Back and Yankellow figured that other expansion opportunities existed that would require less capital investment. Scrapping their building plans, they chose to acquire larger facilities, ultimately buying a three-year-old wholesale bread plant.

Back says his analysis of the metropolitan Phoenix market confirmed that su
cient demand existed for white and variety bread and rolls to justify buying the bakery. “So, though this wasn’t what we did, we saw no sense in turning our backs to the business,” he says.

The sale was completed in 10 days, and overnight Back and Yankellow’s lives were turned topsy-turvy. “Our business had changed from being solely a craft bakery to one that included fairly extensive infrastructure for industrial baking,” he continues.

Both executives faced a steep learning curve because industrial baking was new to them. And the process was stressful. “We had to integrate it philosophically and operationally into an organization that had been exclusively craft baking-oriented,” Back says.

Ultimately, they needed nearly a year to get their arms around the business. During that time, the company purchased new equipment, and in August 2009, moved artisan production into the acquired plant. In October, Yankellow adjusted schedules to allow simultaneous production of the Classic line (pan bread/rolls/buns) and Heritage line (artisan bread, rolls and sweets).

Concurrent production has improved production efficiency, including loading delivery vans, and also helps ensure quality control with increase supervision to monitor production, Yankellow says, “and the move is helping to pull the two crews together to build a more cohesive team.”

IMPROVING PRODUCT QUALITY

In a move important to Back and Yankellow, the latter has applied techniques from artisan baking to high-volume production to improve product quality.

“The former products were Americanized Italian bread and rolls–fluffy, cotton-texture crumb–and each run was made from a single mix,” Yankellow says. Among the initial steps were buying additional mixing bowls and then switching to non-bromated flour and removing shortening from the formula to better conform with Simply Bread’s philosophy of making bread, he adds.

Hamburger bun production exemplifles such changes. The dough includes ingredients such as unbleached, nonbromated flour with 13 percent protein; soybean oil instead of shortening; bromate-free conditioners; natural shelf-life extenders and enzyme-based crumb softeners.

Bakers mix 525-lb. no-time doughs in spiral mixers for five minutes at first speed and 12 minutes at second speed. They monitor the dough temperature to maintain 72˚F to 74˚F, rather than 78˚F to 82˚F. “This is essential in Arizona, especially during summer,” Yankellow says. “Even during the winter, we use ice for as much as 15 percent of the water content. We could make smaller batches at the higher temperatures more frequently, but we would lose efficiency.”

A bowl hoist lifts the dough and dumps it into a chunker, which cuts the dough into 25-lb. slabs. The slabs flow into five pockets of a six-pocket divider to be portioned into 3.75-oz. pieces at 150 cuts per minute.

The pieces travel through an intermediate proofer for 12 to 15 minutes. After passing under a stamper, they are panned manually five by three per pan, racked with 30 pans per rack and rolled into a proofer. Proofing continues for 60 to 75 minutes at 100˚F dry bulb and 90˚F wet bulb. Proofed pieces are baked in double-rack ovens for 15 minutes at 400˚F with an initial 25 seconds of steam. After cooling for two hours on the racks, the buns are bagged or sliced and bagged manually. Plans include automating slicing to gain efficiency in the packaging area. Yankellow believes the return on investment will be quick.

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