As bakery food categories across the board continue to produce stagnant numbers, bakers are seeking new product launches in categories that are growing. Artisan and multigrain breads provide high-volume bakers with ample opportunities for sales growth.

Innovative ingredient blends and mixes allow bakers to produce artisan and multigrain breads without a significant investment in complex equipment systems and research and development. These ingredient systems provide the necessary flavors and grains to formulate breads that satiate growing consumer trends.

Bakeries go to great lengths to enhance the flavor of their products. Some bakers create their own sours through labor-intensive methods such as feeding natural sours in canisters. Other bakeries employ highly automated sour systems that contain multiple stainless steel tanks and heating and refrigeration controls.

Although these methods work for some bakers, other bakers need speed and cost effective solutions. Space, time and cost restraints cause bakeries to look for alternative solutions to create flavorful breads without devoting significant amounts of time for the creation and maintenance of sours. Various bases and mixes allow bakers to produce authentic artisan taste without expensive or time consuming sour systems. These artisan bread flavor systems produce multiple sour profiles, including French bread sours, rye sours and traditional San Francisco sours.

This wide assortment of flavors creates unlimited options for highvolume bakeries looking to break into the upscale bread category without investing money in a manual or automated sourdough system. Besides sourdoughs and ryes, bakers also can purchase mixes, bases and concentrates that assist in creating ciabatta and French, Italian, multigrain and potato breads.

Creating multigrain breads is easy by purchasing an ingredient mix that incorporates a custom blend of grains and seed. These blends combine a variety of grains, seeds and flavorings to produce a variety of products, including multigrain breads, pizza crusts and bagels.