The 24th Baking Industry Awards (2011)

Christopher Freeman, Dunn’s Bakery

Christopher Freeman has bakery in his blood. But, as his local community, the National Association of Master Bakers (NAMB), and disadvantaged children well know, he also has a great ethos of serving others.

Twenty years ago, Freeman initiated charity fund-raiser National Doughnut Week and, so far, it has raised £740,000. He has spent countless hours to ensure its success. But he also gives up an enormous amount of time and talent for others, even though he usually starts work early in his craft bakery.

As a Liveryman of the Worshipful Co of Bakers, one of his many roles involves interviewing young candidates for scholarships. He is also past-president of student and trainee organisation, the ABST, a member of the British Confectioners’ Association and has been
elected as next president of the NAMB, having served these two latter organisations for over 30 years. So perhaps it is little wonder that the nominations for Freeman to win the Lifetime Achievement Award, sponsored by Délifrance, outnumbered all others.

Ian Dobbie, MD of Délifrance, says: “I am very impressed with all that Christopher has achieved. He initiated Doughnut Week 20 years ago, during which time it has raised a massive sum for disadvantaged children – it is quite incredible!”

Christopher now runs Dunn’s of Crouch End, a one-shop business with a wholesale arm, making traditional and speciality breads, including low-GI and cranberry loaves. He supports local miller GR Wright’s, so his oven-bottom crusty bloomers and other goods are made from
local flour – just 45 miles from field to mill to bakery. The shop also produces many cakes, and last year, his confectioner Mark Legg won Rich Products’ Confectioner of the Year award.

Around the shop are pictures of Chris’ ancestors, showing the family baking tradition back to 1820. They contrast with the well-lit, well stocked shelves and counters full of breads and colourful confectionery.

As a leading craft baker, a big supporter of students and a fundraiser extraordinaire, Christopher Freeman is a very worthy winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Robert Ditty, Director, Ditty’s Home Bakery, Castledawson

“I hope the judges enjoyed what they saw, heard and ate,” says Robert Ditty. “And that they saw how much of myself I put into my business – and how much I try to pay back the industry and my community for the support I have had from both.”

The judges were in total agreement, describing Ditty as a “beacon in the industry” and a real example of a hands-on baker, whose strong personality is indelibly stamped on his business.

Ditty’s parents bought the original, smaller, bakery in 1953 and he joined them in the 1970s. Since then, he has monitored the benefits of retail versus wholesale trade and steered the €3m (£2.64m) business to take advantage of both. His wholesale clients include high-end retailers, hamper and gift companies and Cathay Pacific, for which he makes long shelf-life oatcakes. He has two shops, in the market town of Magherafelt and the more rural Castledawson. Ditty’s is well known for its breads, including wheaten or brown soda bread, as well as its hotplate range, which includes soda farls and potato cakes. It does a “roaring trade” in what are known as wee buns; the 40-strong range includes fondant fancies and pineapple creams and sells approximately 7,000 per week. In high season, as many as 70 staff work across the bakery and two shops, and Ditty has set up a training schedule for them through the Belfast Bakery School.

Unifine Food & Bake Ingredients (UK).

Unifine is an international manufacturer of value-added ingredients for the baking and food industries – the essentials to create patisserie, sweet pasty and cake products. In July, the parent company was purchased by Dawn Foods, bringing “better offerings for customers” says managing director Simon Solway. In the UK, Unifine employs 19 people, internationally around 550.

"We do believe we should give something back to the industry. I hope people see us as a company that goes out of its way to support customers,” says Solway. The judges certainly thought so, saying that Unifine was strongly focused on serving its customers, both in terms of innovative product development, and particularly in its management style. “We want people to believe we have time for them, that what they need really matters to us,” he explains. “Our staff are really good at that.”

Well-known for its high-grade Belgian chocolate fillings and toppings, as well as its Fruibel fruit ingredients, the judges described Unifine as “constantly developing new, high quality solutions for customers”. Unifine also demonstrated “great community interaction”, particularly in terms of its support for students. “We have customer demonstration facilities here, which are also used for training days for our sponsored students,” says Solway.

Terry Tang, Terry Tang Designer Cakes, Wavertree, Liverpool

Tang’s has been in business for 12 years, after the former builder decided to turn his home kitchen hobby into a career. Four people work in the shop, producing up to 40 cakes a week; seven flavours are on offer, including fruit, sponge, carrot and banoffee.

Terry’s cake was inspired by the fl oats seen at Carnival – he chose a ‘mythical and magical’ theme. “Carnival is a sort of ‘club warfare’ and is all about groups of people coming together,” explains Tang. “So I included six freestanding figures on the cake.” And what figures they are – individually modelled, limb by limb, in differing shades of chocolate, the three women are all bewinged, the three men all drumming and dressed in Brazilian greens and yellows.

The judges were amazed by the accuracy of the chocolate modelling; the 12in-tall top figure is so intricately fashioned that the bones in her spine are clearly seen. The two-tier, scallop-edged cake is sugarpaste coated, with sugarpaste stars cascading down from the top. These get larger in size as they reach the bottom of the cake and are handpainted in increasingly darker shades of pink. Also hand-painted are the manes of the white winged horses on each corner of the top tier. The judges praised Terry’s excellent skill and creativity in creating the “sculptural quality” of the cake, adding that it really captured the Carnival theme – truly a cake with that “eye-catching wow factor.”

Barbakan Delicatessen, Chorlton-cum-Hardy,
Stefan Najduch.

When managing director Stefan Najduch bought Barbakan, it was a single shop with a small wholesale arm, producing around 10 lines of quality Polish breads. Now, Barbakan is still a single shop business, but the bakery is three times its original size and the shop seats over
60 people on its veranda for coffee, cakes and sandwiches. Its wholesale customers (representing around 35% of the business) include restaurants, sandwich shops and hotels.

Najduch had worked in delicatessens and the meat industry, but throwing himself into his new trade, he discovered a passion for baking (noted by the judges). He soon developed product lines with an international flavour – including Italian, Greek and Norwegian breads.

Forty-eight people work in the business and Barbakan is famous for its range of around 60 breads, many produced from mother doughs dating back to 1964. Especially popular are the spicy chorizo loaf, pistachio breadsticks and focaccia with fresh tomato. The judges were
impressed with the consistent quality of the breads, which they described as “never failing to deliver to expectation”. They also cited Najduch’s good business practices and his customer-focused approach: “We take time to talk to our customers, it’s important,” he says. With a strong marketing plan, including regular leaflet drops and supporting local charities, the judges felt Najduch delivered a very successful business formula, which over 25 years has grown a small shop into a £1.8m turnover firm.

Ruth Hinks, Cocoa Black, Peebles, Edinburgh

Ruth Hinks says she has a passion for “all things chocolate”. She trained as a chef at a Cordon Bleu cookery school in South Africa and came to the UK six years ago. She set up her chocolate and patisserie school three years ago, creating a successful and diverse business.

With courses ranging from beginners’ chocolates to professional pastry chef, some 2,000 people have already been through the school’s doors. The French-style café has been open for a year, offering pastries, cupcakes, biscuits, gateaux and truffles. Hinks now employs 15 people and has just added online sales to her business.

She is proud that the business is growing at a time when many are afraid to diversify; the school is due to move to larger premises and the hunt is on for a new pastry chef. “I just love what I do, from creating in the kitchen to teaching in the school,” she says. She particularly enjoys working with moulded chocolate and uses seasonal and local ingredients wherever possible. One of her favourite products is a cherry & dark chocolate gateau, featuring a vanilla panacotta filling, swirled through with cinnamon biscuits and dark chocolate, a Madagascan chocolate mousse and a ganache covering.

The judges were impressed by the “magic and inspiration” Hinks brings to everything she does, adding that the industry needs innovation from people who “push back the boundaries, both in terms of the offer they create and the products themselves.”

Monty's Bakehouse, Godstone, Surrey,
director Matt Crane

Monty’s Bakehouse is a supplier of premium, ‘bake-in-pack’ snacks, including wraps, subs, slices and muffins, mainly to airlines. The firm was started in 2004 and now turns over £4.5m, employing 16 staff. To provide the best possible service to major client Air Canada – and in what the judges described as “exemplifying customer service” – Monty’s has set up a consolidation warehouse in Frankfurt. From here, it not only delivers its own products to Air Canada at 20 airports around Europe, but also receives in and distributes product from all the airline’s other suppliers. “We turned a straightforward supply arrangement into a deeper, long-term client relationship,” explains managing director Matt Crane. “We went ‘open book’ on delivery, quoting delivered and undelivered product prices, and, because we understand their business so well, Air Canada trusted us to take over the delivery side of things. Two-and-a-half years later we’re now providing the service to other customers.”

The judges noted that Monty’s had directly benefited its customers – passing on cost savings and reducing operational complexity, while creating a long-term solution with the company at its heart. They said Monty’s had “gone the extra mile”, investing in skilled staff and IT
provision to ensure the project’s success. “We’ve grown around 20-30% year-on-year over the past four years,” says Crane. “That’s down to our philosophy of ‘innovation, quality and over-service’. We go out of our way to find out what our clients need, and then find a way to deliver it.”

Greg Cadoni, head chef/director, Bachmanns

Greg Cadoni, head chef/director has been with Bachmanns for just under five years and oversees all production at the Continental patisserie. His Chocolate Christmas Pudding is not a chocolate flavoured version of the traditional dessert, but a “cartoon-style” take on a Christmas pudding, moulded entirely from chocolate.

“We took the concept of an Easter egg – two chocolate halves, filled and stuck together – and adapted it to take advantage of the Christmas demand for chocolate novelties,” explains Cadoni. The two halves of the pudding are moulded milk chocolate, filled with Rocher
clusters – caramelised split almonds, covered in chocolate. The whole thing is sprayed with a dark chocolate, giving it a velvety texture, both in the mouth and in appearance. The pudding is then decorated with marzipan holly leaves and berries. “We made it in four sizes, from 2.5in to 20in,” he explains. “The biggest one, which had a box of chocolates inside, was a sort of Christmas Day piñata, so you could place it on the dinner table and leave everyone to help themselves.”

The judges said the Chocolate Christmas Pudding clinched the top prize, as it had “real wow factor”. They were impressed that the product met a customer need, while remaining “incremental to the rest of the business and maximising production capabilities”.

Morrisons, Wincheap, Bakery manager Colin Hopper

Bakery manager Colin Hopper has baking in his blood – he is the seventh generation of the family behind Hoppers Farmhouse Bakeries. Rather than go to work in the family business, however, he joined Safeway, aged 17, and has been with the firm, now owned by Morrisons, ever since.

Hopper is a regional trainer for Morrisons and the judges cited his impressive training and leadership skills as a major reason behind the bakery’s success. They described the 13-strong team as very supportive of each other, adding that Hopper “displayed all of the good qualities of a manager” and that he was well able “to coach and lead his team”.

The ISB produces 127 kinds of bread, 90% of them from scratch. Tiger loaves are popular and Hopper says there is a big push on healthier ranges, such as spelt & rye and maize loaves. Turnover is up significantly year on year, while the Cake Shop – which is run by another team, but under Hopper’s remit – boasts an impressive 30% year-on-year increase. Hopper says these figures are mostly down to customer confidence – in both product quality and availability. The last bake of the day is often as late as 7pm, with some specialist lines
baked-off a few at a time to ensure freshness.

The judges agreed, adding that the store operation was of a very high standard, and that customers seemed “really comfortable” in the bakery.

Mellissa Morgan, Ms. Cupcake, London

“Just because you cannot tolerate certain ingredients doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a treat,” says Canadian-born Mellissa Morgan. A former theatre worker and teacher, she began her vegan bakery 18 months ago in her kitchen, supplying a local market. Within a year
she had attracted a loyal following and opened her first shop, employing seven staff.

Now her range includes indulgent brownies, cookies and traybakes and she offers sugar, soya and gluten-free products. Her signature cupcakes come in over 100 seasonal flavours, including watermelon, blueberry cheesecake and Pimm’s. She describes her recipes as
“classic American with a British flavour twist”.

The judges admired the way Morgan had stamped her personality on the business and her “great flair and creativity in developing a unique product range” with very demanding ingredient limitations. Morgan also impressed with her clear strategy for growth: planning
a manufacturing site, opening a second shop and developing national distribution. She has already been chosen as a supplier for the 2012 Olympics.

Morgan says she is hands-on in the bakery, and loves meeting customers at lectures and roadshows. “Their feedback inspires new recipes and ideas – like selling ingredients and cooking equipment.”

Dave Tamasauskas, Bachmanns Thames Ditton, Surrey,

Bachmanns’ brigade of seven pattisiers and bakers each have their own specialist subjects, but they are all trained across the three core areas of the patisserie’s business: confectionery, chocolate and bread. “It means we have continuity of supply and service – even if someone is away,” explains owner Chris Bachmann. Dave Tamasauskas has worked in supermarkets as well as independent bakeries during his long career and has been with Bachmanns for around five years. He says that he particularly enjoys developing new speciality breads.

He describes his 460g rosemary and raisin loaf as a light rye bread, packed with natural flavours. Fresh rosemary and raisins are added to the dough, which is shaped into an oval, cut with a leaf shape and dusted before baking. “It’s quite a dense texture, because of the rye flour, but it still has a light eating quality,” he explains. “It’s a lovely combination of sweet and savoury flavours, and goes particularly well with strong blue or goats’ cheeses.”

The judges described the loaf as a bread with a real “artisan flair” and as having an “excellent taste, with a soft, moist crumb texture”. They added that the consumer could really taste and feel the difference in the loaf and, because of this, it commands a good retail
selling price. Truly a winner that “ticked all the boxes!”