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May 1, 2022October 27, 2022

The bake story

By Laurie Gorton

May/June 2022

the bake
story

This innovative publishing platform now observantly reports about the changing face of retail baking.

It’s simple: wholesalers deal with customers, retailers deal with consumers. Communication style, too, shifts when serving retail bakery readers vs. wholesalers. That’s what makes bake so different from other Sosland Publishing brands.

Since its founding in 1987, the magazine has evolved steadily with the times. Originally titled Baking Buyer, it is now known as bake.

“The changes were made to make the content more engaging to our audiences,” says John Unrein, editor, bake and Supermarket Perimeter. “Baking Buyer became bake to reflect a more modern approach to the artistry and business aspects of retail baking.”

Mission oriented

Like most business-to-business publications, bake’s mission is both educational and advisory. It is aimed at educating the retail/specialty bakery audience about influential consumer purchasing and consumption trends affecting the current and future profitability of the fresh bakery industry, as well as to spotlight leading trends in the areas of ingredients, equipment, packaging, technology and business management. The magazine reaches retail bakery, artisan/specialty bakery, foodservice/bakery cafe and intermediate wholesaler audiences.

“bake magazine and bakemag.com are the quintessential resources — both online and in print — for all things baking in the retail bakery and bakery foodservice segments of the North American baking industry,” Unrein says.

Made to measure

bake is certainly the Sosland brand that has seen the most transformation in concept, content and format, thus reflecting the dynamic food retailing marketplace. Its mission today is far different, both more mature and more innovative, than the one that launched it in 1987.

The magazine started as a project of Sosland’s Baking Equipment (now known as Baking & Snack) because competitive pressure forced a demonstration of the ability of Sosland’s bakery audience to respond to advertising. It was a gambit in the numbers game of reader inquiries.

In pre-internet times, publishers urged readers to respond to ads and editorial items by filling out reader service cards, a.k.a. “bingo cards.” Introduced in the early 1960s, these cards could be found in most trade magazines a decade later. The postcards, bound into the magazine, carried a grid of numbers linked to ads and supplier new product news items.

The greater the number of inquiries a magazine generated, the more favorably it was viewed by many advertisers. Ad agencies, in particular, liked such response data because they made it easier to justify ad “buys” during an era that emphasized cost-per-thousand circulation analytics.

Sosland Publishing’s problem was that its bakery publications, Milling & Baking News and Baking Equipment, had far fewer recipients (by just more than half) than Bakery Production & Marketing (Gorman Publishing), the leading competitor. Baking Buyer supplemented its circulation to approach that of the competition.

Magazines that specialized in new product news were fairly common in the 1970s and 1980s. Usually published in tabloid size (11 by 17 in.), their business purpose was to generate sales leads. They circulated free of charge to qualified recipients, often the same list used by another of that publisher’s roster.

Baking Buyer covered product news from vendors and suppliers and was targeted at retail and intermediate wholesale bakers — the prime users of the Baking Equipment reader service card program. Mike Gude, publisher of Baking Equipment, headed up Baking Buyer sales, and Laurie Gorton, then editor of Baking Equipment, supervised the new magazine’s editorial content. The company worked with a University of Kansas journalism student to write the news items on a freelance basis.

“Those early issues look downright primitive when compared with the sophisticated approach, design and reader audience of today’s bake magazine,” Gorton says.

As the 21st century approached, the World Wide Web made reader service cards obsolete. The internet provides myriad opportunities for measuring reader traffic, page views and content interactions with highly precise analytics. Almost as soon as publishers launched their websites and digital editions, they mothballed their bingo cards.

The metamorphosis of reader service numbers into webpage addresses was not the only alteration made by Baking Buyer. Over the years, its content was enriched with feature articles. Its size also changed. The tabloid was modified in 2001 to standard size (8½ by 10½ in.), where it now remains.

In 2005, Baking Buyer split into two publications. “It was then that we increased our efforts to focus more specifically on the retail/specialty bakery segment with Baking Buyer and the in-store bakery with a separate publication, inStore Buyer, which became inStore in 2013,” says Troy Ashby, publisher, bake and Supermarket Perimeter.

Baking Buyer became bake in 2012.

The emerging importance of fresh foods, sold in departments set around the perimeter of supermarkets, led Sosland Publishing to enlarge the editorial coverage and reader audience of inStore, transitioning it into Supermarket Perimeter in 2019.

Circulation by business class finds 62% retail baking; 19% bakery cafe; 12% specialty baking; 5% food service distributor, bakery distributor and broker; and 2% intermediate wholesale bakery.

“There are more specific types of readers in our audience than other publications at Sosland,” Unrein says.

The magazine’s readership skews young, reflecting generational change within the industry and the entrance of many new bakers, especially those in their 20s and 30s. Cover photos often portray these trends and the people responsible. bake’s 2022 Media Guide reported US Census data stating that the retail baking segment employs nearly 200,000 workers, 64% of whom are female.

A dynamic field

The bake marketplace is widely diverse … and rapidly changing. “The retail industry continues to evolve, sometimes dramatically,” Unrein says. “When I started here, there were mostly family-owned retail shops and supermarket bakeries that both followed the same goals.

“Then specialization took hold of the industries,” he continues. “Retailers branched into cake shops, cookie specialists, pastry shops, donut stores and other retail shops that specialized in much more defined — and marketable — product lines. And supermarkets emerged as the leading competitors to retailers because of shifts in consumer buying patterns, such as more one-stop shopping.”

New product news, once the mainstay of Baking Buyer, has long since been superseded by feature content involving ingredients, formulas and technology, plus workplace management, financial controls, food safety, merchandising and shop design, as well as in-person operator profiles.

“New product introductions are certainly still important to our audience,” Ashby says. “As our print publications evolved and digital offerings expanded, new product spotlights have taken more of a digital-first direction. This is reflected by the fact that in nearly every digital newsletter we deliver to our audiences, there is a new product spotlight section of the newsletter — some being sponsored sections, others driven by our editorial teams.”

Dawn of complexity

By John Unrein

September/October 2021

Dawn of
complexity

For two decades, the age of specialization has dominated the retail scene.

bake

Barry Callebaut/Manresa Bread/John Unrein

The year was 2005 when the world understood how dignified the American baking industry had emerged. For the second time in three occasions, the US team had triumphed in the world’s most prestigious event for craft bakers, winning the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie in Paris. Today, the three US team members – William Leaman in artistic design, Jeffrey Yankellow in baguette & specialty breads, and Jory Downer in viennoiserie – are among the most prominent bakery experts in the country.

At the 2019 International Baking Industry Exposition (IBIE), Downer shared pleasant memories when he demonstrated an award-winning pastry that he and The Bread Bakers Guild of America Team USA produced. “We did a dulce de leche crémeux that we cast in a Flexipan and popped out and put in the center of the pastry. We added slices of fresh mango, papaya, and red currents for color.”

Viennoiserie now ranks among the most recognized categories of French pastry, thanks to its flagship baked good, the croissant, according to the Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. The word “viennoiserie” – French for “things from Vienna” – describes a whole category of pastry that includes croissants, pain au raisins and brioche.

Bennison’s Bakery has been a Chicago North Shore institution since 1938, earning a reputation as a popular full-line bakery that specializes in European-style pastries, cookies and custom-decorated cakes. In 1975, Jory Downer followed in his father’s footsteps to join the bakery after learning the craft from his father, Guy, and attending culinary school and classes to improve his skill, eventually achieving the position of Certified Master Baker.

Like many retail bakeries, Bennison’s evolved with changing times. Similarly, Randy George started Red Hen Baking Company in September 1999 on Route 100 in Duxbury, Vermont. George had been baking bread for several years, both in his home state of Maine as well as in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. When Randy and his (future) wife Eliza Cain decided to move back to Liza’s home turf in the Mad River Valley of Vermont, they did so with the intention of opening a bakery.

“We don’t really gain a clear picture of the times we are living in until we have the perspective of distance,” George says today. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot ever since we crossed the two-decade mark in our business a couple of years ago. In many ways, it seems like just yesterday that we hung out our shingle in September of ‘99. But when I think about other periods in history, I’m reminded that a lot happens in 20 years. Take 1945 to 1965, for instance. We can all think of huge changes that happened in those two decades. When you think about it, we probably have seen similarly world-altering changes in the last 20 years.”

Consider these factual nuggets, the baker recalls about the year they first opened:

Bill Clinton was President.
No one knew who Osama Bin Laden was.
Cronuts were not even a twinkle in Dominique Ansel’s eye.
The Bread Baker’s Guild of America was six years old.
There was one option available to the bakery for flour milled from local wheat.
It was whole wheat flour milled by the farmer who grew it and there was no available data on it.

“If I was to guess, I’d say that the protein percentage was 9 at most,” George recalls. “My guess is that most years, this flour had a falling number of 200 or perhaps, less. In other words, as many bakers these days know, it wasn’t much use if it made up more than about 20% of a bread formula.

“Today, we all know what has transpired in the first four areas I listed,” he continues. “Many of us have also witnessed the transformation that has taken place across the country when it comes to bakers connecting with the source of our main ingredient. Twenty years ago, most bakers gave very little thought to where their flour came from. They would buy the type that worked for what they were making. Enthusiastic bakers might know the protein percentages of the flour they worked with, but many didn’t even think about that… and almost no one thought about things like ash content, wheat types and varieties, or where the wheat was grown.”

Today, from field to hearth and everywhere in between, people have thrown themselves into the work of educating themselves about grain growing, harvesting, and milling. It’s not entirely unusual these days to find bakers discussing such esoteric topics as the differences between Red Fife and Benatka wheat or how they dressed their millstones and adjusted the screens on their bolter to get a really silky high extraction flour, George points out.

“In the early 2000s, I recall being so excited when we bought flour from a large organic mill that listed the name and location of the farmer (usually in Nebraska or Kansas) on each load of flour. We supplemented that flour by buying a small amount of that aforementioned whole wheat flour. That was about as good as it got back then. Today, we buy all but a tiny fraction of our grain and flour from three farmers. All of that grain is grown within 150 miles of the bakery. We stone mill several hundred pounds of whole wheat, rye and corn every week on our locally made mill.”

If you told George in 2001 that this would be the bakery’s reality in 2021, he never would have believed it. And the story of Red Hen is not entirely unusual. The list of university-based researchers doing groundbreaking work on growing, processing and baking with local grain is long and covers all regions of the country.

“We have Steve Jones’ Bread Lab in Washington State,” George says. “In Vermont, it’s Heather Darby and the Northern Grain Growers Association, but that’s only the beginning. These days, it seems that every corner of the U.S. has a team of agronomists and bakers working to advance the production of top-quality grain that is well-suited to that particular area. In each of these areas, there is a list of bakeries putting this new knowledge to use by creating great bread that is an expression of the new agricultural economy that continues to develop in response to the enthusiasm for local grain.”

Advent of technology

Likewise, in the all-important cake sector, similar advances have taken place over the past two decades, particularly in the adoption of new technology and design.

“The most significant single change that has happened to the industry in the last 20 years is the advent of technology, particularly the tremendous development of the Internet and social media,” points out Mark Seaman, a Certified Master Sugar Artist and Culinary Applications Chef for Barry Callebaut. He has owned two successful businesses in the Chicago area: an exclusive wedding cake boutique, and a separate retail bakery.

When Seaman first started his wedding cake business in the early 2000s, the only real way to showcase your work was through wedding magazines. Running an ad was an expensive ordeal, he recalls, and there was no way to really know how many people you were reaching.

“Today you can share as many visuals of your work as you like and know instantly which ones are most popular among your followers,” he says.
Technology has afforded cake shops across the country an amazing ability to connect with consumers in engaging ways. Freed’s Bakery in Las Vegas, a national leader in the wedding cake industry, has taken another step forward with its latest creation by announcing that it has developed the world’s first non-fungible token (NFT) wedding cake. It features a GIF of a handcrafted, digitized spinning wedding cake. The NFT is a token that can be used to represent ownership of a unique item.

Freed’s NFT was made available through auction in September. The bidding started at 0.1 of the cryptocurrency Ethereum, equal to $370.06. More NFT cake auctions are underway, including a rainbow cake and a pink pour sunset cake. They can be viewed at the OpenSea website.
Home delivery is another important option for the cake shop.

“We offer local delivery across the Vegas Valley, and pricing is based on the zip code for the delivery address. We ask for a three-hour window in which someone will be able to accept the cake,” according to Freed’s.

Lack of fiber

“Quality of life is the No. 1 priority, and our bread is one of the most amazing things ever to eat,” says Craig Ponsford, head baker and owner at Ponsford’s Place in San Rafael, California. The challenge for him is dealing with what he calls “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of current affairs in America. There is a huge population that is “very undereducated” about food.

“It still boils down to the same thing. The lack of fiber in our diets is mind boggling,” he says. “I’m very frustrated – more than any time in history. What’s happening now is 100 times worse than what happened when the Atkins diet was popular years ago.”

A decade ago, Ponsford proved to be a pioneer in using 100% whole grains in everything he made. While this practice is gaining popularity, it is but a small fraction of overall bread consumption in America. Ponsford strongly believes this needs to change.

“The message is, ‘eat your whole grains,’ but there is a disconnect,” the experienced bread baker says. “People aren’t understanding, and many still feel the need to buy bread with a tablespoon of sugar in it.”

Mike Zakowski, owner of The Bejkr in Sonoma, California, points out that grain quality can vary a lot from season to season, even plot to plot, “as all soils are different and have different needs for replacing nutrients into the soil. For example, if it’s a hard red wheat that is weak or has a low protein that won’t develop into good bread structure, maybe it can be used for sprouting, crackers, dog biscuits and possibly countless other uses.”

Speaking at the 2017 International Bread Symposium at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, North Carolina, Chad Robertson of the acclaimed Tartine Bakery in San Francisco said he’s learned plenty of valuable lessons since working with local and ancient grains for more than a decade.

“I want to get back to using lots of fresh milled stuff. There’s no other way to get that flavor,” Robertson said. “But I have learned that for me to mill everything myself is too much. So why not work with fresh millers nearby?”

Specialization takes hold

Once the Cronut was born at New York City’s Dominique Ansel Bakery on May 10, 2013, Cronut fans spanned the world from Berlin to Singapore, making it the most virally talked about dessert item of the year. Time magazine proclaimed the Cronut as one of the 25 best innovations of 2013.

“I never thought it was going to go that big,” recalls Ansel, who won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef in 2014. “The second day we made 100 Cronuts and we sold out in one hour.”

While the Cronut is perhaps Ansel’s most famous item, the DKA remains a popular seller. Short for “Dominique’s Kouign Amann,” it is best described as a “caramelized croissant” with a crispy sugary crust and tender flaky layers within.

What followed was a trend toward hybrid baked goods becoming the “in” thing. There are hybrid cars, hybrid breeds of dogs, and now hybrid pastries. A hybrid pastry combines one type of pastry or baked item with another. Starbucks once introduced a muffin-donut hybrid called the “duffin” in the United Kingdom. What followed from other bakeries across the country was a list of pastry-mashup names like Kreegals, Cruise-nuts and Krönums.

100 Years

By John Unrein

May 2021

100
Years

For a century, we celebrate the inspiring stories of retail bakeries.

bake

Courtesy of RBA

Our story is your story. During tough times and those filled with prosperity, the retail baking industry has advanced through the determination of family businesses dedicated to knowledge of their craft and solid work ethic. We feed the world — and our families — with a smile. And is there really any greater joy than that?

Your history is our history. And the following are just a few milestones of the many that our businesses have encountered during the past century. Our hope is that these stories remind us all how much our industry matters and how family has kept us together, growing stronger every year.

In the spring of 1918, a movement is started to organize retail bakers into a national body, and on July 16, in Chicago, a temporary organization is created. Eugene Lipp of Chicago becomes the president pro tem. That same year Dunwoody Institute launches its baking program, which eventually leads to the establishment of the American Institute of Baking and attracts future bakers like the Entenmann brothers to Minneapolis for the next 80 years. A year later, in 1919, the Retail Bakers of America (RBA) holds the association’s first annual convention Jan. 27-29 at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago. The convention was scheduled for October 1918 but was postponed due to the influenza pandemic.

Founded a few years later in 1922, our company, Sosland Publishing, begins its journey as a B2B trade publishing company focused on producing and delivering indispensable content for the industries it serves. Owned and managed by a family of editors and publishers, Sosland Publishing’s first 50 years were dedicated exclusively to the grain, flour milling and baking industries. In recent decades, the company has broadened its reach deeper into the food processing industry (including meat and poultry processing), as well as into international grain and feed handling and processing, and most recently, pet food processing and the supermarket perimeter.

In 1921, initially working at Stetson Hat Company, the Termini Brothers (pictured on the first cover of bake’s current, award-winning design) saved enough money to open a humble kitchen and storefront. Termini Brothers Bakery was born in Philadelphia. Within two years, Termini Brothers became the go-to spot for wedding cakes, allowing the brothers to purchase their first delivery truck.

Seventeen years after opening their small storefront, the brothers saved enough money to move across the street to a larger location – where Termini Brothers Bakery currently stands today. Vincent Termini Sr. is born in that same year. As WWII unfolded, the demand for Termini Brothers fruit cakes being shipped overseas to the frontline is insatiable, adding further to the legacy and reputation of the bakery.

Rising in Middle America

In Chicago, Luke Carl recalls that when his wife’s great grandfather, Joseph Dinkel, came to Chicago in the early 1900s, he brought with him remarkable baking skills and recipes from a long line of master bakers in southern Bavaria, Germany. He was able to open a small bakeshop in 1922 with the help of his wife, Antonie. For the first 10 years, it was Joseph baking in the back of the shop and Antonie selling. Joseph’s delicious baked foods quickly became very popular throughout the city.

In 1932, as the popularity of Dinkel’s baked foods grew, Joseph and Antonie expanded the current location. It was about this time that their son, Norman Dinkel, Sr., came into the business and continued to build the quality reputation of the business. In the early 1970s, Norman Jr. took over the helm of the bakery, thus embarking on the third generation of the business. As word spread of the bakery’s quality products, demand for Dinkel’s baked goods began to come in from loyal customers across the country (and even overseas).

“This is why I am proud to be a part of the Dinkel’s tradition (now in its fourth generation) and am so proud to pass on this love of tradition to my children,” says Luke Karl.

Started in 1911 by John C. Roeser Sr., Roeser’s Bakery is the oldest family-owned bakery still in the same location in Chicago. The bakery is now in its fourth generation, with John C. Roeser IV leading the way. Roeser’s was one of the first bakeries in the city to install a freezer in the store and in the shop. In 1946, John Jr. installed the neon sign that still hangs outside today.

When the bakery was remodeled in 1953, it was the first all-Formica store front in a retail bakery. In 1965, Roeser’s became the first bakery with an air conditioned shop in Chicago, which helped maintain the quality of Roeser’s now famous whipped cream cakes on those hot summer days.

Ohio happenings

In 1928, the same year that Otto Frederick Rohwedder’s loaf-at-a-time bread slicing machine ushers in the beginning of packaged sliced bread, Joe and Daisie Busken open Busken Bakery in Cincinnati. Joe borrowed $500 (a small fortune at the time) from a relative with a failed cigar box company, put an oven in the back of the store, and began to sell bread, breakfast sweets and cookies. Joe and Daisie’s grandson Page Busken would serve as RBA president from 1981 to 1983. Joe Busken Sr. knew a good bit about the challenges of the retail baking business when he opened the first Busken store in the Hyde Park neighborhood. His father, Clem, had run a bakery in Oklahoma City after working as a route salesmen for Fleischmann Yeast Co. In Busken’s early years, Joe would bake all night and sell all day, counting every penny along the way.

Another popular bakery in Cincinnati, Servatii Pastry Shop & Deli, grew to 12 stores throughout the tri-state region and numerous wholesale customers. The Gottenbusch family has been preparing fresh baked goods since the 1800s. Great grandfather George started out in Muenster, Germany, driving a horse-drawn wagon door to door selling his fresh baked goods. His son, George, attended Germany’s most recognizable baking school and received his “Konditor Meister” status as Master Pastry Chef. By the early ‘50s, George opened Café Servatii, next to St. Servatii Church — named after an Italian saint — on Servatii Platz, in the heart of Muenster. His son Wilhelm followed in his footsteps. He earned his Master Status, traveled the world, working in Australia, Poland and on an international freighter before settling in Cincinnati.