Europain standouts: From blue cheese slices to creating bakes from leftover bread

Tiger paste

CSM Ingredient’s Tiger Paste (barbecue flavor) won the Pépites de la Boulangerie 2023 Award, presented during Sirha Europain.

Originally, bakers gave their breads a ‘tiger' appearance through a preparation based on rice flour. Realising this technique was a great way to decorate breads, in 2000, CSM Ingredients launched its first decorative paste based on barley flours and active ingredients to provide the appearance and savory flavor, expanding the range to include spices, herbs and flavorings.

The ready-to-use paste is simply brushed onto the raw dough – along with bake-off products – before baking and will create eye-catching, extra crispy breads that punch with flavor. It also offers bakers the opportunity to diversify their offering without changing their day-to-day production processes.

“Our Tiger Paste range meets the growing demand for quality breads, as well as the diversity of tastes and textures that consumers are looking for,” a company spokesperson told Bakery&Snacks.

“Consumers are getting increasingly demanding when it comes to their food, including the bread they eat. They are looking for premium – preferably artisanal – varieties that excel in taste and texture. At the same time, the demand for variety and original, flavorsome creations rises year by year. Tiger Paste is supporting our customers’ to constantly differentiate their offer with new taste experience and eye-catching bread propositions.”

The annual Pépites de la Boulangerie is hosted by the Fédération des Entreprises de Boulangerie et Pâtisserie (FEB), the Cercle d'Etudes de la Boulangerie et Pâtisserie and Honoré Le Mag.

“We’re delighted to be one of the awarded companies of the Pépites de la Boulangerie 2023 Award for our Tiger Paste Barbecue flavor, which rewards our efforts and highlights the quality and innovative nature of our product.”

The current range includes four variants: Black Pepper & Sea Salt, Mediterranean, Country Classic and Smoky BBQ. Recently, palm-free Tiger Paste was added, which maintains all of the product’s distinctive features – taste, appearance, crispiness – with the added USP of being palm-free.

“It also has a lower viscosity, which is very interesting for industrial applications in particular.”

Crumbler

One-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted every year around the globe. This can happen at any stage of the supply chain, from agricultural production to household consumption.

Food waste is a persistent problem for bakeries. In the past, when consumers relied on the corner baker for their daily bread, they would have to line up early or risk sellout. Today, thanks to mechanization, bread is widely available, but the ability to produce thousands of loaves a day comes with a downfall. Bread dominates the food waste leaderboard, with more than 1.3 million tonnes tossed each year, the equivalent of 5.2 million baguettes wasted.

Enter the Crumbler, which turns surplus bread into breadcrumbs that can be used in new recipes.

With a mixture of breadcrumbs, flour and imagination, a baker can innovate to his or her heart’s delight, creating a variety of texture, flavors and formats.

“Breadcrumbs can be used to remake bread or new pastries, such as cookies with 100% breadcrumbs,” project manager Lola Boulanger told Bakery&Snacks.

“Le Crumbler helps bakeries grind bread and prepare the raw material. It was invented in 2015 by Franck Wallet, a French young urban planning engineer, who sought to quickly transform unsold bread after observing significant waste, which has a strong environmental, but also economic and social impact. He noted this waste is present, even within associations, which collect so many donations of unsold bread that they are unable to redistribute everything.”

He collected bread and pastries destined for the trash and ground them into breadcrumbs to replace flour in many recipes, coming up with some very interesting flavors and textures.

But to transform bread into breadcrumbs in large quantities on professional sites, he realized the need of a machine. The Crumbler was born following discussions with bakers, enabling the production of breadcrumbs achieved on a larger scale.

“From the crushed raw material, bakers can make new bread, cookies and other snacks,” said Boulanger.

Currently, three models are available – including two for artisan bakers – with the capacity to grind between 60kg to 200kg of hard bread per hour. The equipment has a small footprint – ranging from L 23 x L 31 x H 88

The Crumbler is the next gen marketing tool that will resonate with eco-aware customers and comes with a recipes booklet – to increase the value your unsold bread – and health control sheets.

Cheese and cream

Arla Pro - a brand owned by Arla, the second largest dairy cooperative in Europe, with a network of over 9,000 farmers processing around 14 billion liters of milk annually – is making a push into the bakery sector.

At Europain, the company was showcasing its recently launched 35% cream and blue cheese slices, but actually has a much wider portfolio that includes butter, yogurt, milk, cream, ready-to-drink coffee and more under the Anchor, Cravendale, Lurpak and Starbucks brands, among others.

“We are very much a forerunner in terms of sustainability,” Amal Belkaid, marketing manager, Foodservice, Arla France, told Bakery&Snacks.

“We were among the first to agree on the Paris Agreement and last year, established an incentive model for farmers based on the action they do at the farm that would enable us to reach our carbon net zero target by 2050. That can be many things, from feeding cows to the electricity they use, which gives them points and impacts the price of the milk we pay them.”

Asked how this ties into the bakery sector, Belkaid explained Arla Pro was established in 2018 and is active in Europe, MENA and Southeast Asia.

“Depending on the country, we have three different target groups: bakery, burgers and pizza.

Arla was the first mozzarella manufacturer in the world, and with the popularity of pizza restaurants, is obviously a “main focus in France”. The company is also targeting the burger segment, a popular menu item on 80% of restaurants in France.

Aligned with its slogan, ‘Partners at heart’, Arla Pro’s mission is to work hand-in-hand with chefs and had teamed up with Joannes Richard, who was crowned World Burger Champion at the World Food Championships held in Dallas, US, last November.

His winning creation? “A burger with pineapple ketchup, ginger, tomato, mango pickle, popcorn and pecan muesli and Tabasco,” he told this site.

His presence at Europain as an Arla Pro ambassador was to showcase the ease and flexibility of the cheddar and blue cheese slices in a burger. Visitors to the stand delighted in samples.

Looking ahead, Richard will be organizing next year’s World Food Championship in France and envisions opening a string of burger restaurants.

“The third segment for us is what we call snacking. Today in France, over 90% of the bakery channel offer a snacking option, which usually makes up 30% of their revenue,” said Belkaid.

“Our proposition has always been there for the snacking market. We have cheese slices, cream cheese, white cheese, mozzarella … so why not open to the overall bakery sector, also with sweet options?”

Enter Arla’s 35% whipping and cooking cream, recently launched in Europe. Again, the company had enlisted a professional pastry chef to showcase its versatility at Europain.

The cream was specifically developed for pastries but can also be used for savory treats and “has high stability, great taste and great functionality,” Lea Chiari, who has a bakery in Nîmes in southern France, told Bakery&Snacks.

While plant-based is a dynamic sector in places like the UK, Belkaid said it’s still an emerging trend in France. However, it’s not to be ignored, and Arla will soon be launched a plant-based mozzarella.

She predicts food waste will become a big focus in 2024.

“As a brand, we need to be able to provide products that have that strength, but also be able to provide inspiration and tips for the chefs to overcome food waste. At the end of the day, you might give it to Too Good To Go, [sell it at a lower cost or donate it to a foodbank] but how can you bring value to it again? The most famous one was the *almond croissant. So, how can we go further and support the chef with ideas?”

Looking ahead, Belkaid said Arla Pro France has an ambitious strategy to grow and drive revenue, currently a little more than €20m annually.

“Our plan is to multiply that by three by 2027,” she said, achieved by cementing its focus on the pizza and burger sectors, but also within the bakery environment.

“Our 35% cream is just the first chapter. Many more products are coming for bakeries.”

Alongside the cream, the company was showcasing “a mozzarella stick and a mozzarella cube, which give you a different mouthfeel and can handle high temperatures without browning too much. What is also interesting is that once it’s cold and then put back into the over, it’s just like it was the first time it was baked,” said Belkaid.

“We are also showcasing 100% cheddar slices [typically in France, cheddar slices are made up of 80% processed cheese with lots of additives] sourced from a cheese made in the UK, as well as the blue cheese slices, the only one in the market, a 100% natural cream cheese and white cheese in oil. You can actually reuse the oil.”

Croissant and pain au chocolate

At Europain, the bakery manufacturer unveiled a selection of frozen ready-to-prove (RTP) pastries for artisan bakers.

The ARTY Viennese pastries – including a 75g croissant and an 80f pain au chocolate – represent a three-year journey of extensive R&D and form part of Bridor’s Éclat du Terroir range.

The crescent of the croissant boasts a distinctive pyramidal shape with finely layered laminations, comprising of thin, delicate puff pastry layers and a silky-smooth crumb. Made from quality raw materials, such as wheat grown in France, butter and barn eggs, the recipe boasts a buttery flavor complemented by caramel notes.

An innovative folding technique results in the new ultra flaky and structural pain au chocolat – a first in the world of industrial baking. It contains 20% extra chocolate (compared with the original Pain au Chocolat in the Éclat du Terroir range) and embraces a short, wide shape and flaky appearance.

“Bridor’s commitment to creating innovative products that resonate with both consumers and professionals is at the heart of everything we do,” said Erwan Inizan, UK sales director.

“We are proud to introduce the Viennese pastries as they not only reflect our passion for the art of baking, but also showcases our dedication to pushing the boundaries of frozen bakery,” said Erwan Inizan, UK sales director for Bridor.

“Created especially for artisan bakers using new, world-first production methods, the ARTY Croissant and Pain au Chocolat are the perfect embodiment of our commitment to delivering exceptional taste and visual experiences.”

Decoration stamps

Bakery decoration can be taken to the next level with the Es-Tamp range from Maé Innovation.

Created in collaboration with Jonathan Mougel, Meilleur Ouvrier de France Pâtissier-Confiseur 2019, the stamps can be used for the finest and most delicate sugar and chocolate work.

The designs range from leaves to dragonflies, with decorative mats made from 100% premium silicone, which guarantees perfect unmoulding. They are also resistant to both high (up to +280°C) and low temps (down to -45°C).

Kits range in prices from €35 to €9 and are available online.

Aquafaba

This year’s Sirha Europain – which recognizes the very best innovations in the bakery and patisserie sectors – named Very Aquafaba winner of the Products & Ingredients category of its annual Awards.

According to founder Arnaud Delacour, this was in recognition of the products ability to easily integrated into existing processes used by manufacturers and foodservice professionals.

“Using science and technology, the Very Food Co studies the properties of legumes and oilseeds to develop ingredients with unrivalled performance, making the best that nature has to offer accessible to the greatest number,” he told Bakery&Snacks.

Driven by strong ecological convictions and created in the wake of the 2019 IPCC special report on land use alerting us to the urgent need to change the food production chain, the Very Food Co. is committed to rapid, large-scale vegetalization of food by changing functional ingredients but without altering the organoleptic qualities of finished products.

“The idea is to move away from a world dependent on factory farming for everyday foods, replacing them with natural, plant-based ingredients that are just as good for your health,” said Delacour.

Very aquafaba – made from the liquid resulting from the cooking of chickpeas – was specially created for pastry and mixology professionals and offers an allergen-free, shelf-stable alternative to traditional egg white, but with many more advantages:

• Doesn’t alter the quality and taste of the final product.
• Shelf life 15 times longer than egg white before opening.
• Can be stored at room temperature before opening.
• Ultra clean label with a single ingredient.
• Can be used just like egg white in everything from 100% plant-based chocolate mousses to croissants and into the world of cocktails.

“So many solid foundations for imagining a gourmet future without ingredients of animal origin, but certainly not without pleasure,” said Delacour.

Available to professionals from specialized distributors for an RRP of €12/liter.