Pitching A Loaf

The final results are in! After a loaf a day for 90 days, Dr. Lin Carson shares her final weight and levels. Did she gain 20 pounds like everyone thought she would, or was her hunch right that a diet full of bread isn’t as terrible as people think? Dr. Carson did not gain a single pound during her bread journey, and she stayed healthy too! Joined by co-host Dave Dahl, Nutritionist Connie Evers and Janice Cooper from the Wheat Marketing Center, she goes over how the last 90 days impacted her nutritional profile. Connie breaks down areas like cholesterol, potassium, fiber and protein and why Dr. Carson’s bread diet worked. To celebrate the end of the 90 days and the podcast, the cast celebrates with some bread and edible candles! Jonathan Steiner stops by to tell about his game-changing product: candles made from chocolate! Talk about innovation! Celebrating our last podcast of the season with Candies Candles on top of delicious Chocolate Brioche Buns This wraps up Dr. Carson’s 90 days of bread. Dr. Ca

There’s no question about it: consumers want a cleaner and simpler label. Although many chemicals have GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) status from the FDA, people want them out of bread. But don’t worry bakers! There are natural alternatives out there to make your bread delicious as ever! Dr. Lin Carson asks co-host Dave Dahl why he started Dave’s Killer Bread with the tagline, “just say no to bread on drugs!” Another company who has put a lot of effort into cleaning up their label is the Orlando Baking Co. in Cleveland. With over 250 varieties of fresh and frozen bread products and nine production lines, they have removed bromate and ADA from their formulas. Orlando Baking Co.’s Meredith Long explains the challenges and rewards of going clean. She also talks about their unique probiotic breads, and why we should be eating them! So just how did the bread industry evolve to need all these additives? Christy Griggs, a food scientist at Corbion, explains why products like DATEM, ADA and SSL are needed

Could sourdough be the lean, clean savior of the bread industry? Dr. Lin Carson thinks so. Along with Dave Dahl, she addresses what many bakeries may be experiencing: as delicious and popular as sourdough is, it can be a headache! Between time, scheduling, need for skilled labors, and the cost of destroying a starter, it’s no small feat. But not an impossible. Joining us today are two sourdough experts, who have different approaches to putting sourdough on the shelves. One is Doug Michael, passionate baker and owner of Columbia County Bread and Granola. His company makes a flourless sourdough sprouted bread that is naturally leavened. From grain to oven, their process takes 36 to 48 hours. However, it has a number of health benefits, such as a low glycemic index and easier digestibility. And of course, bursting with flavor! Still, not every bakery has time for this process. So Jeff Nelson, vice president of sales at Brolite, shares his solution. High-speed production doesn’t have the floor space or ti

Ah, shelf life. One of the most important, yet challenging aspects of baking. Dr. Lin Carson and Dave Dahl dive into the two sides of the shelf-life coin: inhibiting mold and fighting staling. Lin suggests using ingredients like sugar or honey to make bread softer longer, while also inhibiting mold. But baking time and temperature are also key, with a fine line between too much or not enough moisture. To find out more about reaching that optimal shelf life, Lin and Dave invite on Al Orr, vice president of sales and marketing at J&K Ingredients. Al explains how their Soft-Bake product line uses a mix of concentrated enzymes to address starch retrogradation. Can you trust enzymes in your formulation? Al has the answer. Moving on from extending shelf life, to extending the future of bread, Peter Reinhart stops by. America’s favorite bread guru and author of eight bread books, Peter discusses how a food over 6,000 years old must evolve to stay relevant, and what this means for the bread industry. It looks like

Pitching a Loaf is on the road! Today’s episode comes to you from the Johnson and Wales International Bread Symposium. Dr. Lin Carson and co-host, David Deblauwe of Puratos, bring on founder Peter Reinhart to learn just why the world needs an academic platform to discuss bread. Bread is a global issue, important in so many ways. However, it’s also under attack. Reinhart started the symposium to bring bakers, historians and scholars from around the world to look at the bigger picture and “talk micro on macro issues.” One huge issue: sprouted grains and their impact on the future of bread. Sprouting increases the flavor and nutritional value of bread, but many industrial scale bakeries hit a wall sprouting their grains. Yet our next guest has an innovative solution. Central Milling’s Nicky Giusto shares how they are tackling the issue with their frozen sprout mash. By sealing and freezing sprouts at the optimal point, the enzymatic process slows to a stop, allowing for a drastically different shelf life. Nic

Summer is coming. And for most of us bakers, that means more issues with mold. Further extending product shelf life is something we all strive for. But what’s the best and safest way? Dr. Lin Carson and Dave Dahl reveal some of the things they’ve done to keep mold at bay, from cultured wheat to deep cleaning. However, as demand continues for clean-label products, how do you fight mold naturally? To answer that question, we bring on two guests who work with natural mold inhibitors: Marni Atcheson, owner of 20 Shekels bakery, and Jim Sausville, president of J&K Ingredients. Marni shares how her company, who makes a majority of their breads with sprouted grains, relies heavily on natural, organic sources to stop mold growth, such as raisins. However, this does limit their options when it comes to more savory breads. So Lin gives some other ways that can slow mold in bread products. Next up, Jim explains how J&K Ingredients developed and grew their trusted Bread-mate product. This organic mold fighter has be

Do you know what’s happening in your oven? You should, your bakery could be doing a lot better. That’s the lesson one baker shares with Dr. Lin Carson and David Deblauwe on today’s show. For years, their large-scale bakery had been experiencing 10-15% waste in bread products. Now, they have it down to 2%. How? Thermal profiling. If you're someone who writes this off as something that’s too expensive for your operation, you should listen to what Arif Sunderji has to say, and how running a thermal profile pinpointed issues they had been trying to solve for years. During this show, he also shares his experience on how using a thermal profiler shaved 4 mins from his baking time. Since the oven was the bottleneck, this meant that he could increase the speed of the dough divider. Who knew that the thermal profiler can extend the shelf life of your bread (by baking less), and increase line efficiency as well? The three also talk about how flour and dough conditioners can influence the consistency of bread. Jo