It's a fairly tricky ask, reinventing the wheel - possibly as challenging as reinventing that bakery stalwart, the divider moulder. "There's a lot of old equipment out there that's just brought back with a facelift," is the assessment from Interbake's David Dunne, which would be a somewhat downbeat way to open an article on innovations in this area of the machinery market. Thankfully, he adds that the bits that have been developed in recent times are simple tweaks to make day-to-day operations easier. That can mean anything from safeguarding against manky dough festering around your kit to cutting out the need for multiple machines for different-sized dough pieces.

http://www.benier.co.uk (Milton Keynes, Bucks) | http://www.cater-bake.co.uk (Knowsley, Merseyside) | http://www.equipline.co.uk (Uxbridge, Middlesex) | http://www.jestic.co.uk (Tunbridge Wells, Kent) | Pizza Plus Foodservice chris@pizzaplus.fsnet.co.uk (Preston) | http://www.servequip.co.uk (Croydon, Surrey)

Originally, pizza dough was cooked outdoors on hot flat stones. Not entirely practical or indeed desirable in this HACCP age we live in, but you don't have to brave the British weather to produce excellent pizzas. There are options to suit you, from counter-top to conveyor models. Here are just a small selection:

You don't want to mess with Giuseppe Mascoli's oven. The Neapolitan pizza owner prides himself on his E9,000 (£7,085), handcrafted specimen. "I had it made by an artisan in Naples," he says. "Then put on an industrial trolley and shipped over on a container. It's a very particular oven."

Passionate People, Passionate About Food' is Rotherham-based Maple Leaf Bakery's slogan. This passion, along with a huge pride about what it does and what it has achieved, were the main instigators behind the company's decision to enter last year's Baking Industry Awards and the reasons behind its Bakery Manufacturer Of The Year accolade. Sitting in marketing and innovation director Guy Hall's office, drinking tea out of an 'I love New York bagels' mug, the passion is certainly evident.

In December 2006, Mike Thurlow, miller and tenant of Letheringsett Watermill in north Norfolk, won the UKTV Local Food Hero Award. One of the judges, celebrity chef Gary Rhodes, described him as "the nation's favourite" and thousands of internet voters clearly agreed.

So you've undertaken a green audit, embarked on an energy efficiency plan and explored eco-friendly packaging. How else can you make your business more ethical? Consider looking more closely at the core of your business - at the products you sell.

A combination of the credit crunch, high raw materials price inflation and low business and consumer confidence makes this a testing time for owners looking to finance an early or mature phase of expansion in the food sector.

Bread has been with us since ancient times, but never before has the whole industry been under such scrutiny from consumers concerned with their weight and health. Ancient Britons would probably have given Sid the Slug short shrift, but nowadays, the baking industry cannot afford to turn its back on calls to lower levels of salt and saturated fat and to help people make healthier choices.

Brits are eating less salt. Average daily consumption has fallen by 0.9g to 8.6g since 2000, reports the Food Standards Agency (FSA).

You don't have to be a big-scale operation to take advantage of IT, and a number of smaller bakeries have benefited from a long-established package, tailored to craft businesses, which has recently been upgraded.

People driving SUVs are not the only ones worried about rising oil prices. Its impact is being felt throughout industry, and baking is no different. Add in spiralling costs for wheat and other raw materials, and protecting margins in our business is getting harder and harder.

H alloween is traditionally about dressing up in ridiculously unscary costumes, the implied necessity for everyone - well every child - to be out roaming the streets at night, trick or treating and getting someone else in the family to buy and carve a pumpkin. However it is also emerging as an increasingly profitable event for the bakery sector.

Like many businesses, those in the baking trade often feel that they have little spare time on their hands to dedicate to environmental issues. However, this is an area where a little investment can pay dividends in terms of improved resource efficiency and cost savings.

We have a three-year plan to double the size of our business," says an excited Délifrance MD Ian Dobbie, having just cut the ribbon on a spanking new bake-off plant in Wigston, near Leicester. Having topped the £40m turnover mark at the end of last year, this represents a major kick-on for the business, which has seen around 15-20% year-on-year growth for the past decade. Until now, the firm has been largely perceived as a frozen par-bake specialist, but this is set to change, with a renewed assault on the packaged morning goods category, armed with a new ability to fully bake-off its own products.

Roly's Bistro is a modern rarity: a restaurant that bakes its own bread and confectionery, rather than relying on mixes or pre-baked products. Now it has done something even more rare: it has set up a bakery shop and café to sell the products that were previously the reserve of the restaurant. It is even thinking of franchising the concept - or at least extending it to other outlets.

Such is the pace of change in the spy vs spy world of supermarket buying, that the greatest delight in developing new products comes in creeping up and mugging a competitor with a category first.

OK, so let me confess straight up - I am an accountant and the amount I truly know about baking can be written on a grain of baking powder. The only time I have ever baked was on a 72-foot, 50-tonne yacht in the mid-Atlantic, which was racing for Boston on a 40-degree tilt... and I can assure you that is not good for making bread evenly sliceable!

A recent announcement by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) suggests that the number of foreign workers being exploited is higher than previously thought, particularly in the food processing industry. To tackle the problem of rogue employers, the GLA launched Operation Ajax, an initiative that will see the authority carry out up to 30 raids during the next 18 months.

With many messages on the subject of our economy travelling like wildfire around the baking industry, you won't be blamed for supposing we're about to suffer the first recession this century.

The Bakers' Benevolent Society (BBS) celebrated its 150th anniversary with a family open day on Sunday 15 June at Bakers Villas in Epping.

The dairy sector has seen prices of raw ingredients rocket alongside all the other commodities, and the café and bakery retailing sector is no stranger to this. But aside from cost, what issues do bakery retailers and cafés face when it comes to the dairy products they use? Is it important to them to use locally sourced and/or organic products, and do customers care?

Over the last year, healthy breads such as whole grain have experienced the fastest growth within the bread sector. The same period has also been marked by the widespread cleaning up of ingredients labels. This all amounts to great news for the shelf-life of the people eating the breads, but not so great for the bread itself.

Last month saw the London opening of an Italian coffee chain that harbours ambitions to reassert Italy's easily overlooked status as the godfather of espresso - since its position was usurped around the globe by Starbucks and its bastard (in the nicest possible way) offspring. I know what you're thinking: "Great, that's just what the UK needs, another branded coffee chain."

Matt Scott knew he faced a battle to make flour sexy when he bought Bacheldre Watermill seven years ago. After all, producing organic and traditional flours from a 16th century Welsh water-powered mill in Powys was, literally, miles away from his former life as a postman in Gosport.

Greener packaging - it's straightforward, right? Plastics are "bad", while paper and cardboard are "good". Well actually, it's not quite that simple, and even the experts don't agree. Landfill, where most of the UK's waste ends up, is under huge pressure. Space is due to run out within the next five to 10 years, according to Defra. And with conventional plastics taking between 200 and 500 years to break down in landfill, it's obvious that we cannot keep burying it underground, then burying our heads in the sand about the environmental impact.

For some, looking for government support - whether in grants, tax incentives or simply advice and training opportunities - has something of a stigma about it. That is, until they see who else is already benefiting from this type of support.

I must respond to your News Insight item 'Crunch time for training' (27 June), to address what seems to be a lack of understanding regarding the important and entirely positive developments currently underway in bakery training in the UK.

Courgettes, also known as zucchini, are a very versatile vegetable with a delicate flavour. Courgettes were not widely eaten in Europe before the 20th century, but have been cultivated in Central America for 5,000 years and are related to watermelons, gherkins and cucumbers. They are plentiful in the summer months and anyone who has ever grown courgettes will know that they seem to turn into marrows before your eyes and are best when picked young, as they have more flavour and less water.

Tom Herbert a fifth-generation baker and director of Hobbs House Bakery, a multi award-winning craft bakery based in south Gloucestershire

The Whole Grain Stamp - a nifty little black and yellow food packaging label that has done wonders for the bowels of our American cousins - was launched recently into the UK, in a move that would have our back-page dietician Dr Allinson rolling around joyfully in his grave.

It seems fitting that Asda's Boldon Colliery got the gong for best in-store bakery at BIA07 - gongs being something of a recurring theme at Asda's in-stores. Remember the advertising campaign earlier this year, featuring Victoria Wood ringing a bell to tell customers that freshly baked bread was on-shelf - part of Asda's novel approach to promoting its scratch baking? Well that was filmed in Boldon, Asda's flagship bakery, and deemed the best in-store in the UK by the BIA judges.

W ith increasing consumer awareness about what they are eating, the current trend is the use of natural fresh ingredients. It's easier for small craft bakers who sell locally to use more fresh fruit pieces in their toppings, as many have a relatively short shelf-life and are made for immediate consumption. "The biggest trend, though, is that people want premium products and they are actually willing to pay for them," says Stuart Allan, operations and development director of Indulgence Patisserie.

Manufacturers and bakers will be able to get free advice on automating their plants from CenFRA, a newly-formed body whose vision is to to provide independent, affordable automation solutions.

Düsseldorf's giant exhibition halls swallowed up more than 179,000 visitors over the seven days of Interpack, a monster, triennial processes and packaging bash. More than 2,700 exhibitors, including packaging and processing equipment manufacturers, used the event to launch their very latest models, boasting improved efficiency and sophisticated technology. Both traditional and "eco-friendly" packaging manufacturers also used Interpack as a springboard for their launches.

With landfill tax now costing £32 a tonne and set to rise by £8/tonne every year until 2012, business is facing an inflation-busting bill for its waste.

A lot of time is spent here at the SoHo Sandwich Co working with both our chefs and numerous bread suppliers to create interesting combinations of fillings with the right bread to bring out the flavour. We need to use a perfectly balanced selection of flavours and textures to make the customers keep coming back.

Employers are obliged to provide information to, and consult with, trade union or other appropriate representatives where they propose to make 20 or more employees redundant at one establishment within 90 days or less.

The importance of investing in the future of the industry emerged as a key theme at this year's SAMB (Scottish Association of Master Bakers) Technical Sessions, which were held at the Peebles Hydro Hotel. Guest speaker Pat Smyth, who is president of the Irish Association of Master Bakers and managing director of AB Mauri company Yeast Products, stressed the need to address the industry's "low skills base", adding that "educational support is becoming an issue". He also identified a problem with retaining people in the industry.

How do we solve a problem like organics? Once the hills were alive with the sound of ringing cash tills, as the organic market continued its decade-long steady growth. But the organic idyll was recently upset by an ominous rumbling in the form of new data, which showed that the organics market suffered the first year-on-year downturn in sales this year in April (source TNS Global).

There have been, I admit, quite a few occasions when I've made a decision that didn't really work out as planned, such as the location for a shop. Then, through a stroke of good fortune, someone has come along and made me an offer for the site that gave me a good profit - and I always took the credit for being so far-sighted.

The Scottish Association of Master Bakers (SAMB) conference, from 24-27 May, saw George Stevenson, MD of of Mathiesons of Falkirk, with 32 shops and mall cafés, and a growing wholesale business, take over as new president.

Combis, the multi-purpose workhorses of the oven world, can be used to roast, steam or bake food. When used in combination, the various heating methods within each oven speed up the cooking process, maximising efficiency and saving time.

As summer is almost upon us - or at least as much of a summer as Britain normally gets - most of us like to have a barbecue in the garden when the opportunity strikes, and salad is nowhere to be seen in shops by Sunday afternoon. But does this hot weather affect the sales of hot savoury food? Do consumers, who are out shopping in a busy high street on a hot summer's day, choose to grab a pasty-on-the-go, or a sandwich?

Where do you go for the taste of authentic Parisian artisanal bread? Middlesex would not be many people's number-two destination on this front. But in Upminster, you will find a self-proclaimed sourdough "mini revolution" under way. (Any sightings of Frenchmen roaming the countryside wielding their baguettes in an aggressive manner are purely coincidental.)

Italy is renowned worldwide for its gastronomy and that gastronomy is part of our history, culture and tradition," says Davide Nardini, vice-president of the Council for the Province of Ferrara. "Here in Italy, food is an expression of our cultural heritage," adds Carlo Alberto Roncarati, president of the Chamber of Commerce. "Each area has its own history and intrinsic character. You can see that even in our bread and, if you don't protect it, you lose your identity, you lose what sets you apart."

For bakery owners, buying a new vehicle to transport perishable goods can be an expensive business, particularly when looking for specialist vehicles such as refrigerated vans. Many fledgling firms opt for used vehicles when attempting to build up a small business or start-up on a tight budget. Most will be aware of the used commercial van dealerships. But there is an alternative option that offers a wide variety of vehicles and potential to unearth a bargain - the auction.

Where the Telegraph article does fall down is in its failure to recognise that UK bakers have already mastered the art of making large-volumed, fine-structured and soft-eating wholemeal bread products; but then I doubt that there were any bakers in the audience for the talk to make this practical observation.

When eating bread, most of us probably don't think about the empty space in it, but rather whether we like its texture and flavour. Yet both of these are driven by bubbles. This is because one of the key aims when mixing is to ensure that air is trapped in the dough and, for sandwich and toast bread, we want the air to be evenly dispersed.

Bubbles could be the answer to encouraging more children to eat sandwiches made out of healthier brown bread, proclaimed The Daily Telegraph in a recent article (tinyurl.com/5oxs96). In it, the article suggested that there is a basic problem encouraging people to eat more brown bread because of its inferior texture to white bread.

Making plaques, rolls loaves, pastries and decorating cakes - all against the clock - is challenging enough in a real working environment.

What was your route into the milling industry?

Best of times

John Foster - Fosters Bakery Fosters Bakery, based in Barnsley, south Yorkshire, supplies fresh and frozen products to major retailers, airlines and caterers

The phrase "real men don't eat quiche" emerged in the early 1980s as the title of a book on stereotypes about masculinity. It could perhaps be rewritten as a tagline for Giles Foods as "real bakers don't bake quiche". Or, at a stretch, "real bakers don't make any money from supplying quiches to supermarkets". But then we're getting silly.

1 I am a small independent sandwich shop operator with limited kitchen space. I buy in mostly bake-off products, so I require a deck oven that is well-suited to baking-off baguettes and making pizzas, but it has to be simple to use.

The UK cakes market has enjoyed positive, though slowing, growth over the past five years, but the shape of the market is changing.

When new MD Paul May talks about an "aggressive" growth strategy for Patisserie Valerie (PV), the word jars somewhat with one's perceptions of the shops. Original owner Madame Valerie was quite happy with one store thank-you-very-much, and it took over 60 years before PV opened its second store. Since 1987, the business has been quietly nurtured by the Scalzo brothers, who took the original Old Compton St shop and added eight more over 20 years. While the one remaining Scalzo in the business, Victor, carries a frame you wouldn't mess with, this ain't the kind of aggressive retail expansion form that gets the big high street players running for mummy.

Premium cakes have enjoyed juicy growth over the last two years, but with food inflation, house price fears and financial instability, will the top-end market hit the skids? When it comes to tightening the belt, it helps if you don't eat luxurious cakes. But that's enough of the diet tips. How do you sell premium cakes when people have less money to spend?

Island Bakery Organics

Only in its third year, Tesco's latest 'Enjoy the Taste of Scotland' has already become the biggest Scotland-only food and drink show in the UK and probably the world, says its initiator and Tesco's senior buyer for Scotland, Sarah Mackie.

Tom Herbert - Hobbs House Bakery

A new Italian-style bakery, Il Valen-tino's, in Dublin, has been trading since early this year. Owner Owen Doorly spent 13 years in Italy, working mainly on coffee roasting, and returned home to start up this bakery.

Walking into a room full of baked goods - rolls, Viennoiserie, Granary and Hovis loaves, exquisitely decorated cakes and yes, the occasional bread which looks a bit lopsided or lacks spring - is quite a moving a experience. Especially when everything has been created by keen and competitive students.

At the annual National Association of Master Bakers conference in Blackpool members heard that the decline in membership that has taken place over recent years has been halted.

The cost of basic ingredients used in bakery has risen extraordinarily over the past year.

One exhibit stood head and shoulders above the others at BIE - literally.

Caffè Culture 2008, with its wide range of exhibitors, food demonstrations and extensive programme of seminars, is less than three weeks away. The show, taking place at London's Olympia on 21 and 22 May, features the latest products and services from international and UK-based suppliers, from bakery and café design through to kitchen equipment and training.

Larger bakers - we're talking business size not belt girths here - have long recognised the benefits of automatic roll plant. But what about the smaller guys - again, not the vertically challenged - who are thinking of improving efficiencies by automating?

No doubt fuelled by the likes of poo-obsessed TV nutritionist Gillian McKeith, healthy breads and, specifically, whole grains, have seen a revival over the last five years, with the focus being on maintaining a healthy gut. Heart health, on the other hand, has fallen somewhat off the radar. As one industry insider stated, during the course of researching this feature, "The health claims are amazing, yet the Brits seem to concentrate on bowels!"

I f the major multiples are to be believed, their attitudes to local sourcing have shifted dramatically over recent years. Gone is the emphasis on size and scale. Gone are the uncomfortable trade-offs between volume and margin. Or so we are told.

As more and more celebrities popularise wheat-free diets, it is not surprising that people find difficulty in having coeliac disease taken seriously when they ask for gluten-free food.

Change and produce new products: we know we have to do both. Yet when I look at our end-of-year figures, what do I find? Yes, you guessed it, all our top sellers are the old lines and the vast majority of our cash comes from those.

Job history: Young joined BB's in 2005, during which time the number of cafés has grown from 90 to 179. Prior to that, she spent 12 years working in foodservice and retail marketing and international brand development, 10 as marketing manager (Europe and the Middle East) for Burger King, and, latterly, two as marketing director for Greggs.

B B's Coffee and Muffins may be best known for its handmade and fresh-baked muffins, but the expanding franchise operation now sells a whole lot more besides - and its doors are wide open to suppliers.

A few years ago, while digging up the M1, workmen dozily pierced the pipeline taking water to Coca-Cola's biggest factory in Wakefield, Yorkshire.

John Montague (1718-1792), the fourth Earl of Sandwich, often gets the credit for inventing the sandwich.

Back in 2005, McCambridge's chairman, Michael McCambridge, was quoted in the Irish Times as saying: "McCambridge is linked almost exclusively with brown bread and we want to keep it that way." Two years later, it acquired the second-biggest cake manufacturer in the UK, in the shape of Inter Link Foods. But they'd already picked up three UK businesses by that point, en route to the 10 in total that they've accrued in the UK and Ireland since 1999.

With summer just around the corner, outdoor parties are promising to be in full swing - and you don't need to be an events organiser to cash in.

With a trained chef as a mother to teach her cookery from an early age and a father who worked for Lloyds Bank providing commercial nous, it's perhaps not surprising that Gemma Parker has ended up running an increasingly successful cake-making business in Norfolk.

One small step for bakers (or a few steps upstairs to the conference rooms at Baking Industry Exhibition), one giant leap for baking kind. What last year appeared a challenge at one time as unlikely as putting a man on the moon - getting the baking industry to speak with once voice - last week came a significant stride nearer.

What service do you sell?

How did your career progress before joining Costa Coffee?

Bakers and confectioners are advised to get their skates on if they want to take part in this year's Baking Industry Awards, as the deadline, Friday 16 May, is fast approaching. The Awards have a category to suit everyone, so there's no excuse not to have a go.

Piping bags that pipe themselves

Separated by just a couple of hours on the Eurostar, the French and UK bakery scenes might as well be worlds apart. The first hint of this comes when you ask a French baker about the local baking industry. They immediately recoil at the mere mention of the word "industry". In their eyes, it's seen as the antithesis of craft - if not another name for Beelzebub.

Enjoyment, indulgence and the growth of the café culture are the main ingredients of the recipe for muffins' booming success. One measure of this is the decision by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) last month to add them to the basket of goods it uses to determine the retail price index.

When somebody asks you, 'Do you like the taste of hospital food?', it's usually because you've spilt somebody's pint in a packed Wetherspoon's. Last month, British Baker had to ponder this question when we attended a taste test of baked goods, supplied into Southampton University Hospital. And it wasn't without a similar sense of Friday night trepidation. This was a gluten-free taste test.

What's a company to do when it's wrapped up a quarter of the UK's manufactured sandwich trade in over a quarter of a decade? Why, take over the US market too, obviously. Greencore's declared - and frankly, long-awaited - ambition to get involved in convenience foods in the US, a country with untapped potential for large-scale chilled foods manufacture, is finally nearing fruition. A small team has been busying itself with this project for the past year and a decision is due in the "relatively near future," says chief operating officer Tony Hynes.

So what's new?

When your customers are rushing to catch the 06.59 from Reading to Paddington, there is no time to get your product offering wrong. That's why, even after 15 years of running coffee kiosks at major UK stations and airports, AMT Coffee regards quick service and using exceptional ingredients, such as 100% Fairtrade coffee and organic milk, as key. It also holds customer loyalty very dear, and even today, despite around 80% of customers repeat purchasing up to five times a week, the managing director reads every single customer comment.

Welcome to the new-look British Baker, incorporating Bake & Take magazine! We are bigger, brighter and there are other major developments too.

8am

Husband and wife partnership Tricia and Paul Barker run a very individual bakery and café called Cinnamon Square, in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire. What makes it unusual is that this is Britain's first 'theatre of baking', where customers can watch the bakers make cakes and pastries and quiz them about how they do it. This area is known as the Makery. Children's parties can be held here and Paul Barker also runs evening courses in bread and cake-making.

Ensure you have a varied and diverse range of soft drinks available.

There was a time when the only soft drinks you could buy in a baker's were cans of Coca-Cola and lemonade. But there has been a revolution in the soft drinks available from manufacturers and in the public appetite for new and different types of drink. Coca-Cola and other carbonated drinks are still available, and still popular, but these days they are likely to be sold from a free chiller supplied by the manufacturer.

Visiting Bells of Lazonby, near the heart of the Lake District, can be a confusing experience. On the one hand, you have miles and miles of quintessential country lanes, punctuated by centuries-old hedgerows and traditional stone cottages. On the other, lying in a lane just off the village high street, you have one of Britain's most forward-thinking bakeries - one that has national distribution, was the winner of Sainsbury's Bakery Supplier of the Year and considered corporate social responsibility (CSR) a part of its very ethos long before most us had even got our heads round the slogan.

The search is on once more to find the baking industry's high fliers and success stories, with the official launch of the Baking Industry Awards 2008. The awards, now in their 21st year, recognise the hard work and passion of the people and companies that make the British baking industry one of the most exciting and innovative in the world.

Alistair Darling revealed his plans for the UK economy in his first ever budget this week, but how will the baking industry be affected? See 21 March British Baker

Paris-Nord Villepinte will play host to this year's Europain & Intersuc exhibition, which welcomes confectionery and bakery professionals from around the world.

The equipment bakers use for applying spray coatings and glazes ranges from basic hand-held spray bottles to highly sophisticated automated systems. Spray automation has huge potential for raising production efficiency, reducing wastage of labour and materials and improving product consistency. But do costs rule it out for all except the biggest firms in the industry? Many smaller and medium-sized bakeries may think so and baulk at the prospective costs of automating, or even mechanising, their spray operations.

The coffee shop culture is not a new concept in the Lake District National Park, but recently, the trend has been reaching out to those in search of more than just the afternoon treat of tea and scones. Forward-thinking bakery owners Phil and Ruth Eastwood, a husband-and-wife team, say they will soon be accommodating 'Stitch 'n Bitch nights', in a newly opened café area next to their Oak Street Bakery in Windermere.

Disgruntled with the humdrum of the busy city life, Barry Hawthorne moved to the Isle of Skye from Cape Town. Captivated by the moody Scottish countryside, it's here that he set up his pet project - a bakery called The Isle of Skye Baking Company.

Angela Pullin's arrival into her parents' business has brought a renewed vigour, plus a slice of not inconsiderable marketing and PR nous. In four short years, she has helped pull Pullins beyond its traditional markets, culminating in canny new branding and packaging last year. What's more, she says, this modernising bakery has since set its sights on breaking out of its south-west stronghold by taking on a more diverse client base.

Are you a senior executive or director? Are you also one of an increasing number of people who, internally, feel under pressure to perform at levels that are not sustainable, but without which, your future is insecure? The pressure comes from fearing what might happen if you do not perform to the requested level.

Being with it and modern is very difficult these days. There are those who tell me it is old-fashioned to wear a tie and jacket on even semi- formal occasions.

Despite being a continually evolving industry, that has survived and adapted to modern technologies and ever-changing consumer tastes, bakery is often considered the poor relation to cooking.

More than 30 new exhibitors have signed up for the Baking Industry Exhibition (BIE), joining many big-name regular exhibitors.

There's a certain amount of faith required when following the recipes in Richard Bertinet's new book Crust. The French baker, who runs a bakery and cookery school in Bath, is a firm believer in using a high percentage of water in his bread recipes, which he argues makes for light and airy loaves. Unfortunately, it also makes for a very sticky dough - so sticky in fact that there may be times when you think you have made a mistake in following the recipe.

Take a passion for food, stir in a desire for indulgent treats to fit a vegan lifestyle and top it off with a concern to cater for those affected by food allergies and you have the recipe for the success of London-based Heavenly Cakes.

We are living in an age when consumers want to be associated with outer beauty and inner vitality, and just like the guests on the Channel 4 TV show 10 Years Younger, Waterfields bakery has been undergoing a dramatic facelift.

How and when did you become involved in the baking industry?

There is a fine line between brilliant innovation and the utterly bizarre. This was evident from the Hotelympia 2008 exhibition, which showcased a vast range of products, including aluminium teabags and juice made from flowers.

Having spent a lifetime in the trade - many of those years in training - we seem to have endlessly thrown the skills ball around, with few willing to take on the challenge. So what are these skills: are they craft, process, or apprenticeship and where are they coming from, together with the supporting knowledge and understanding?

Honeyrose Bakery, the organic cake baker based in Park Royal, London, is significantly stepping up its operations to meet the growing market for organic hand-baked cakes. The firm, founded in 2000, has outgrown its current bakery, having "knocked through into neighbours until we've run out of neighbours", as Adrian Apodaca, Honeyrose's marketing director, puts it.

Momentum is gathering around the National Skills Academy Training Centre for Bakery. Whether this ends up based at Campden and Chorleywood Food Research Association (CCFRA), as mooted, or emerges as a handful of satellite colleges, scattered across a wider geographic reach, is still up for debate. Fosters Bakery, for one, would like to see a national skills centre set up in Barnsley. This is not surprising - Fosters is bas