Baking & Snack - June 2015 - 37

Freshly baked loaves of gluten-free bread exit the oven on one of Village
Bakery's most automated lines.
Village Bakery's specialty involves purchasing equipment, then modifying it to adapt to the product - rather
than the other way around. As a result, much of the production technology responsible for creating a high volume of craft-style baked goods is unique to the bakery.
"When you look at a big plant bakery in the UK, from
start to finish, it's normally a high-speed Chorleywood
process where nobody touches the product until it gets to
the packaging room," he observed. "We like capacity, but
we do it in a way where it's not a detriment to the product.
The product is king. If we can automate something, we'll
do it, especially if it makes the product better. If it damages the quality of the product or forces us to change the
recipe, we won't use that equipment."
Village Bakery collaborates with regional businesses to
source its ingredients locally. The buttermilk comes from
Caernarfon, the beef and lamb from Conwy and the milk
from Coedpoeth - all within 100 miles of its bakeries.
However, Village Bakery's natural "slow dough" process
provides a point of differentiation for premium products
in the market. The three bakeries simply mix flour, water
and yeast into various sponges that ferment naturally up
to 16 hours.
"We have different types of starter doughs, sourdoughs
and cultures that add sweetness or savory flavor. You can
do anything with a sourdough now. It really is amazing,"
he said. "The good thing about slow dough is that you get
your natural mold inhibitors, and you get so much flavor
from it. That's something my father introduced 40 years
ago. For a lot of people, the slow dough trend is new, but
to us, it is what we do."
Relying on the slow dough process provides a point of
differentiation. Take its foray into the highly competitive
crumpet market where it transformed the ordinary into the
extraordinary. "We maintained our quality, concentrated
on taste and indulgent flavors, and when we looked at runof-the-mill products, we improved them just to jazz them
up," Christien said. "We've taken the basic crumpet, which
is a commodity in the UK, and we've transformed it by
adding taste and technology - meaning we now have the
tastiest crumpet on the market in the UK."
The process is also the key to making its signature
Welsh cakes. "It's a great blend of 'slow mix' and a great
blend of spices and good fruits with plenty of butter that
all combines together in a hot-plate bake," he noted. "They
taste just-baked. Not dry."

On the cutting edge
In addition to its conventional products, Village Bakery
makes gluten-free bread, distributed throughout the UK
and shipped frozen to European markets.

Looking for Village people
It takes a village to raise a child, but when that
baby is the family bakery, having a well-trained
team is needed to nurture and grow the business.
To accomplish this, Village Bakery collaborates with local universities and trade schools
specializing in food manufacturing in North
Wales to train bakers and engineers as a part its
apprenticeship programs.
Bakery apprentices learn the fundamentals of
baking, train with a tutor one day a week and
spend the rest of their time getting hands-on
experience in the bakery. Apprentice engineers
work alongside experienced engineers to learn
the latest in process and technology.
Currently, the company has 14 apprentices in
bakery training. It hopes to have more in the future. Today's apprentices are the supervisors and
leaders of tomorrow, according to the company.
As part of the qualification process, candidates are asked to send in a recipe and describe
how the product fits their personalities. "We
also want to figure out if they're the type of people we're after," said Christien Jones, projects
director. "They have to have the right qualifications. They have to be 'Village people.' "

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