bake - May/June 2022 - 32

SOSLAND PUBLISHING
years
celebrating the Sosland Centennial. To date, these reports
have been published in 2021 issues of May/June, July/
August and September/October and the 2022 issue of
March/April.
A little more than a century ago, retail bakers organized
a professional association, the Retail Bakers of
America. Its first annual meeting was scheduled for
October 1918 but was postponed because of the influenza
pandemic then raging.
For most of the 20th century, retail baking was
dominated by family businesses, usually founded by
an immigrant masterbaker and serving primarily local
markets. On a national scale, supermarkets entered
retail baking with small in-store shops, made possible
by the advent of frozen doughs and flexible small-scale
commercial mixing, proofing and baking equipment
introduced in the 1970s.
By the 1990s, the artisan bread movement had
Family-owned bakeries
such as Roeser's
Bakery, founded in
Chicago in 1911, remain
a constant force.
started to revamp retail baking's product lines and
ownership profiles. It was centered at first on the West
Coast but rapidly spread throughout the country. This
new/old bakery style attracted a new group of bakery
operators, often young people from outside the traditional
baking professions. The celebrity baker emerged
side by side with the celebrity chef. The Bread Bakers
Guild, the champion of artisan baking, formed in 1993.
The James Beard Award, created in 1990 and now considered
the food industry's highest honor, has recognized
Outstanding Pastry Chef from its start and, more recently,
Outstanding Baker among its award categories.
Today, US retail bakers rival any in the world in their
expertise, evidenced by 2005's victory at the world's
most prestigious event for craft bakers, the Coupe du
Monde de la Boulangerie (World Cup of Baking) held in
Paris - the second time in three occasions that Americans
achieved this distinction.
Specialty flours, particularly organic styles, rose
in attention and usage by the retail baking segment.
Whole grain, gluten-free, non-GMO and vegan, plus fiber
enrichment, have found a place on the retail baker's menu
boards. The late 1990s finally saw a licensing solution
to the legal problems that previously occurred when
bakers depicted popular characters from movies and
comics on decorated cakes.
Technology has improved, too, as computer-aided
processing equipment became available in this market,
thus leveraging the masterbaker's knowledge and skills
over a wider range of employee capabilities. But the
big change in retail baking has been the rising use of
the internet and social media. Not only do bakers find
it easier to advertise and describe their products in
this fashion, but it has also fostered creation of unique
products. Think cronut, or duffin, or cake truffle. Or even
a wedding cake non-fungible token (NFT).
American retail bakers have now caught up with
the bakery cafe format so popular in Europe, and retail
bakeries also figure in the pop-up trend, the newest
form of food retailing.
Radical redesign
Over the years, Baking Buyer evolved from a product
tabloid into a full-fledged business magazine. But in
2001, its readers found something entirely new in their
mailboxes. The magazine mounted a total redesign.
Everything changed. The impact was immediate.
" Who said that business-to-business books had to
look like trade magazines anyway? " opined then-editor
Kerri Conan, in the January 2001 issue as she introduced
readers to the new look.
32 < MAY-JUN 2022 | bakemag.com
ROESER'S
http://www.bakemag.com
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