Tesco has decided to re-use the un-bought bread it previously discarded. There’s a new bakery-inspired computer game on the cards. The Bread & Jam festival gets into speed dating. And in Spain the legal definition of wholemeal bread is clarified at long last, and the legal loopholes firmly closed. What a fascinating sector we operate in!

Tesco transforms unsold baguettes into fresh new products

Bakery-led food waste is a scandal of monster proportions, with baked goods accounting for almost 33% of Britain’s total food waste. Now Tesco is going to turn unsold in-store baked baguettes and batons into new products.

Bread is the second most wasted food in the UK. It’s astonishing to think we ditch around a million loaves a day. At the same time Tesco says fresh baguettes and batons are the most likely to be left unsold by the end of the day. Now the unsold products are going to be used to make olive crostini and bread pudding, due on the shelves in 24 branches shortly, and the supermarket estimates it’ll cut the amount of unsold fresh bread by as much as 50%.

At the moment Tesco reduces the price of some surplus bread, and sends some to food distribution charities on the evening of the day it was baked. The rest is offered to Tesco staff, and any leftovers used for animal feed. And this latest initiative means Tesco is 80% of the way towards their target of ‘no food safe for human consumption going to waste’.

Using surpluses in store to make new products saves good food from being thrown away for no good reason. It’s the latest in a slew of initiatives to use up waste bread, which includes a growing number of breweries making bread beer. The Gail’s Bakery chain has also joined in, creating fresh sourdough loaves from unsold bread.

Streamline Games launches Bake ‘n’ Switch

‘It’s a breadful task but someone’s gotta do it!’ Streamline Games is guilty of an awful pun but it’s all in a good cause, namely the brilliant new bread-related computer game Bake ‘n’ Switch.

The story goes like this. A long time ago, in a faraway bakery, the First Bakers defeated The Scourge, which threatened their precious food source, the cute doughy creatures that they baked in their oovens. The Bakers must save their world, and that means combining their doughs into bigger and bigger clumps. The bigger the clump, the higher your score. And you have to bake the loaves, too, masses of them.

This wonderfully silly game sees players travelling through various levels to summon the Guardians, deal with their constant munchies and persuade them to help defeat The Scourge. Bake ‘n Switch is a multiplayer party game starring four Bakers called Ginger, Parsley, Thyme, and Rosemary, and their enemies the Stickies, the Spores, and the Mouldies. The game is due to be launched in the EU during August or September 2019, so keep your eyes peeled.

Bread & Jam Festival goes for business-led speed dating

This year’s Bread & Jam festival, the fourth, takes place in early October this year, and it’s going to feature a speed dating initiative with a difference. If you have a ticket you can apply in advance to pitch your business to a panel of seed investors, angel investors, venture capitalists and investor club members. They’ll invite their favourites to a collection of ten minute face-to-face meetings in the Pitching Zone, where they’ll deliver an elevator pitch, business plan summary and company valuation in an effort to impress the panel.

The festival is all about accelerating the growth of fresh food and drink SMEs, and also features a Meet the Buyer initiative where brands can present their products to the big boys, folk like Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Selfridges, Whole Foods Market, Planet Organic, Fenwick and more.

Spain’s legal definition of wholemeal bread

Spain has officially restricted the definition of ‘wholemeal bread’. Until now, ‘wholemeal’ in Spain meant the bread could contain just a tiny, weeny amount of wholemeal flour, if any, and still be called wholemeal. Bakers would use colourings to make the bread the right shade of brown, and the flour used was often merely refined white flour with wheat bran added in afterwards. Now wholemeal bread in Spain can only be called wholemeal if it contains the entire wheat germ and that wholemeal is a ‘significant part’ of the loaf.

The so-called Bread Law makes amends as well as stopping products being called sourdough or rye bread unless those ingredients are actually included in the recipe. The new law replaces the loophole-filled 1984 version and impacts pre-packaged supermarket loaves as well as fresh-baked artisan breads. There are also tax implications. The old-style wholemeal bread, which wasn’t wholemeal at all, attracted a VAT-style tax of 10%, but the new-style actual wholemeal will be taxed at just 4%. Happy days all round for the Spaniards!

We bake proper bread

You won’t find anything untoward in our fresh, flash-frozen artisan breads, made exactly as they should be by people who know exactly what they’re doing. If your end-customers appreciate the delights of proper bread, why not give them a real foodservice treat? Just ask for generously-filled free sample box and find out what all the fuss is about.