Donuts Get Re-Mixed With Creative Ingredients

It’s no longer only about plain cake or glazed, Long John or Cruller. It seems donuts have become so gourmet and in-demand that they are no longer confined to the white paperboard boxes of small-town bakeries.

“The growth of the global doughnut market can be attributed to the increasing number of retail stores, rising urbanization, and changing consumer lifestyles. New product launches and the increase in demand for healthier doughnuts are major trends that will have a positive impact on the growth of the market over the next five years,” says Manjunath Reddy, a lead food research expert from Technavio (source: Business Wire).

In 2017, 195.18 million Americans consumed donuts. We’re not so sure about donuts being “health food,” but we do know that this figure is projected to increase to 205.63 million in 2020. Donut shops across the country are baking up success by pushing the flavor envelope – with the humble, traditional donut as a base.

The recipe for this donut renaissance?

  1. Use high-quality ingredients to create the flexible donut.
  2. Add creative, innovative, and sometimes just plain shocking ingredients into or on top of the classic.

Trends observed over the past several years include creations like the Cronut; bacon on/in everything, including donuts; and the donut sandwich, which offers a donut in place of a bun, to hold in more traditional sandwich stuffings like fried chicken and burgers.

Donuts have long been an affordable and delectable indulgence. With profit margins seemingly at risk, rest assured consumers seem to be willing to pay more for tasty trends.

Is the donut the new cupcake? It’s too soon to tell, but what won’t ever trend down is the need for quality ingredients to make the base donut a stellar partner for imaginative toppings and flavors.

We carry many of the popular Pillsbury® cake and donut mixes in multiple quantities for professional and commercial bakeries. When you’re looking for a quick, easy way to create something delicious, trust Bremer to get the cake mix, fillings, and toppings for you.

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How Many Pies Does it Take to Have a Family Gathering?

How Many Pies Does it Take to Have a Family Gathering?

Bakeries around the world love the holiday season. With so many families having so many gatherings, so many pies need to be baked. It starts with Thanksgiving, as orders increase drastically for pumpkin pie and apple pie, specifically, but extends into other pies as well.

Are consumers tired of pie by the time Christmas rolls around? Absolutely not. Thanksgiving whetted the appetite a bit, and individuals are ready to fully indulge at Christmas.

For consumers, the desire is simple: satisfy a craving, enjoy a family get-together and make sure there is enough for everyone. Leftovers are not only acceptable; they’re encouraged.

For bakery owners, it’s a little more complicated, of course. The increased demand for pies means needing to be fully stocked on sugars, flours, seasonings and all other essential ingredients. If you’re out of ingredients, you’re out of pies and customers need to go elsewhere.

At Bremer, our job is to make sure we are amply stocked on all these high-quality food ingredients, so when a baker comes to us with an order, we can fill it in a timely fashion. Consumers need their pies, so bakers need their ingredients, so we need to be ready. And we are.

Is there Such a Thing as Too Much Pie?

The general rule for a holiday family meal, which takes into account larger portions than a normal meal, budgets for each person, on average, to eat one three-inch wedge of a nine-inch pie (there are six of these slices in the pie). Simplified, a family should have one full pie for every six guests at the table.

This is an average, so it factors in the aunt who wants a tiny piece, the uncle who doesn’t like dessert and the cousin who eats half the pie himself. Still, because there are so many types of pies, families are inclined to purchase double or triple the serving suggestion in favor of having flavor options.

In short: individuals will buy more than they need for holiday parties and, based on averages, need more than usual.

Just Desserts?

We’ve focused a lot on pies here, but if you’re a bakery owner, you know the demand for rolls is increasing as well. Each guest at a family gathering will eat 2-3 rolls, depending on size, at dinner, and leftover rolls are one of the most coveted items after the meal.

Understanding this, we’re stocked with the flours, salts and everything necessary for bakers to make their customers’ holidays just that much better.

With the holiday rush in full swing, we are available to deliver ingredients promptly to meet your needs. Contact us and let us know how we can help!

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Demand for Non-GMO Sugar Increases

Food-manufacturing and food-processing companies are pushing to rid their products of genetically modified organisms due to increased demand from customers. As consumers seek healthier lifestyles and diets focused on natural ingredients, companies have had to adapt to keep their sales up.

For example, The Hershey Company announced in early 2015 they would be removing GMO ingredients from almost all its products. Most notably, Hershey’s Kisses and Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bars are no longer made with genetically modified beet sugar. Rather, they are being made with cane sugar.

Hershey’s isn’t the only company ridding their products of GMOs, but they are the most notable. While they haven’t yet committed to shedding GMOs from all their products, that point appears to be coming. Consumers are demanding it, and consumers usually win.

Where Can U.S. Producers Source Non-GMO Sugar?

Currently, most of the sugar grown in the United States is beet sugar, which can be genetically modified. In order to acquire non-GMO sugars, companies need to source internationally, with Brazil becoming a more and more enticing market.

Brazil is the largest cane-sugar producer in the world, although a lot of their natural cane sugar goes to create sugarcane ethanol (fuel), so they aren’t necessarily the largest producer of edible cane sugar. That could change, however, as more and more companies in the United States and elsewhere look to Brazil for the pure, non-GMO cane sugar.

What it Means for the Sugar Industry

Brazil has the perfect climate for cane sugar, which used to be the only type of sugar anyone wanted. Will their high level of production increase as more U.S. producers seek natural ingredients?

Or, will the beet-sugar producers in the United States start to remove their GMO crops and produce natural beet sugars?

The costs are generally higher with non-GMO ingredients, which means the price of cane sugar could climb significantly if companies look to source their cane sugars from Brazil and other foreign countries. Of course, there are costs to beet-sugar producers switching their business models as well.

With consumers demanding more natural ingredients, will they also bear the brunt of these price increases? In general, natural ingredients cost more, so it will be very interesting to follow these trends to see how the sugar industry handles these consumer demands.

We are committed to assisting you with your needs no matter the shifts in consumer demands. At Bremer, we carry both GMO beet sugar, and Non-GMO can sugar. Let us know what your consumers are demanding and how we can help.

Contact Us Today for a Quote!

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The Importance of Increasing Flour Yield

The Importance of Increasing Flour Yield

Basic economics tells us if a producer can yield more wheat flour without spending more money, that producer increases profit. All producers of ingredients are constantly working to increase their yields without simultaneously increasing expenses. More important, they want to increase their yields without compromising the consistency of the quality. What does this mean to you, the food producer?

Obviously, it’s a little more complicated than that, but with how important flour is to baking, wheat flour producers play a vital role in our industry.

In order to increase the yield, millers need to get as much of the endosperm from a wheat kernel as possible. The endosperm makes up most of the kernel, is high in carbohydrates and protein and is the only part of a kernel used in white flour. Whole-wheat flour also uses parts of the bran (the fiber-rich outer covering of the kernel) and germ (the fatty inner part of the kernel), which are byproducts of white flour.

Milling techniques to keep the endosperm in tact and separate from the bran continue to evolve, with recent science even developing strains of wheat that make it easier to separate the endosperm from the bran.

Aside from economics, why is it so important for producers to yield more flour? Because, as bakers know, just about every recipe depends largely on flour.

The Base of Baker’s Percentage

It might seem like common sense, even to someone who has never baked anything, that flour is a crucial ingredient in baking, but it is so crucial, in fact, bakers use it as the constant in Baker’s Percentage.

Baker’s Percentage bases recipes on flour weight, which aids in consistency among several different batch sizes, recipe comparison or altering and even forecasting a recipe’s characteristics.

Flour is always listed as 100%. In a recipe requiring 50 pounds of flour and 25 pounds of water (also known as hydration), flour would be listed as 100% and water would be listed as 50%.

The percentages will always combine for more than 100 and the actual amounts of all non-flour ingredients depend completely on the weight of the flour. Bakers measure flour in weight rather than volume as flour can settle while being stored, making its density inconsistent.

While using Baker’s Percentage might not be the most efficient method for a mainstream home baker (sometimes, small quantities become impossible to measure among other inconveniences), it is incredibly valuable to mass producers and food manufacturers who know consistency is quite possibly the most important aspect of their product. Using Baker’s Percentage allows for a consist product no matter the batch size and predictably alter ingredients when needed.

Bremer is a leading wholesale flour distributor, serving the state of Michigan and northern Indiana. We’ll take care of your order – whether a single bag or several truckloads – and have it to you on time and to your satisfaction.

CONTACT US TODAY TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT OUR DISTRIBUTION SERVICES

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