In the latest issue of Slice

Ah, fresh white sliced bread. You just can’t beat it, right?

Well it seems many consumers would beg to differ. Sales of packaged white bread are declining while sales of artisan breads are rising.

I visited two very different operations to find out why this is happening and how they have bought into this changing market.

It’s 6am in Freeman’s Bay, Auckland, and at Victoria Park New World a handful of bakers are just starting their day, rather later than most bakers. That is because their product sells best when freshly baked and even still warm.

Eight months ago, under the guidance of longtime BIANZ member Paul Hansen, the supermarket opened its artisan specialty bread section offering small batches of European-style bread baked on demand throughout the day.

Using a sourdough starter developed by Champion Flour’s Mike Turlej, the bakery produces a minimum of five traditional loaves and buns (pain au levain, variations of flavoured batard, ciabatta, half baguette, sourdough grain and seed, and pavé), increasing the selection on busier week-days and the weekend.

Artisan bread making is technically challenging, says Paul. The process is slower than for “ordinary” breads because a longer fermentation – up to 72 hours in controlled conditions – is required to mature the flavours.

The dough goes through more hands-on work with three stages of storing and turning, and its delicate structure can easily be affected by atmospheric conditions. Therefore in training the bakers, who learn every aspect of the bake, Paul says it was important to be very specific in detail. “The challenge is to get the same product and the same quality every time. They need to understand the dough; when you get it right the dough talks to you.”

Paul describes artisan bread as ‘clean label’ due to the small number of ingredients required. While a typical bulk-produced white loaf contains about 11 ingredients including ‘number’ ingredients, the pain au levain has seven ingredients. That is part of its appeal.

Paul also points out that our culture is moving to a more European-style of dining and this is reflected in the seasonal changes in the bread sold at Victoria Park New World – heavier breads are popular in winter for accompanying soups and casseroles, bread for sandwiches, barbecue fare and brunches is more popular as the weather warms up.

Paul’s advice to anyone considering adding artisan bread to their range is: “Understand your market and recognise what your customer wants and what you can tempt them with.”

In Pukekohe, a township south of Auckland, baker Albert Psaros has recently opened Albert’s Kitchen, a retail outlet for his artisan bread which he aims to develop into a specialty foodstore.

The bread is baked overnight away from the shop and then sold wholesale to Auckland cafes, restaurants, specialty foodstores, farmers’ markets and now his own outlet.

Originally an IT specialist, Albert came to New Zealand from the UK in 2002 with his family and discovered the bread here was “horrible”.

Albert comes from a Greek family. His father was a restaurateur, so Albert grew up around food and knowing what good bread should taste like. After all, Greeks eat more bread than any other culture.

“And everything about Greek culture revolves around the kitchen really, it’s all about food.” Back in the UK, Italian and French influences too meant a good supply of quality artisan bread.

Albert says when considering the bakery, it wasn’t going to be enough to just make a good product. “It had to be made really well, it had to taste exquisite.”

He developed his own sourdough starter and uses a long fermentation period, usually 48 hours, to allow the dough to mature and the lactobacilli probiotic bacteria to add flavour and improve proving quality.

The hands-on operation takes around 12 hours for Albert and his assistant baker, Mukesh, to produce the next day’s order. Currently they produce 20 different loaves – some seriously artisan like seed loaves and pain au levain, others with broader appeal such as his garlic focaccia.

Albert sees himself as the innovator who drives the business through his passion for quality good food; his point of difference is authenticity and his adventurous ideas for products.

He wants people to feel comfortable in his shop and get to know the baker. “The way we set up

Albert’s Kitchen was really important. We priced our bread to be accessible because we didn’t want to put people off by being exclusive. That’s really important because we are a working ordinary family ourselves so we made quality our point of difference, not price.”