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 based in Barnsley.

T he Competition Commission's (CC's) two-year-long investigation into the grocery market inched towards a final conclusion last week, with the publication of its long-awaited final remedies statement. On the surface, bakery suppliers should be happier with the recommendations than high street bakers, who face the daunting prospect of even more supermarkets springing up around them.

Mirroring developments in the US, cupcakes are attaining a cult status in the UK with an explosion of flavours, colours and frostings. Consumers, particularly baby boomers and generation X-ers, tend to be sentimental about foods that evoke childhood memories. For the younger generation, the concept of retro eating brings a sense of fun.

A bit of a baking industry legend to say the least, Ernst Bachmann has been nominated as a finalist at the Baking Industry Awards no fewer than 15 times, and last year was the fifth time he walked away with a gong. Readers of BB will also know him for his series of recipe Masterclasses in these pages - not that this would have biased the independent judges, who praised his exceptional products in the face of tough competition.

Most of us would like to make a small difference to the planet or leave the world a little bit better off than we found it.

Previously the preserve of teas and coffees, more and more Fairtrade badges have been popping up on bakery products in recent months. Fairtrade is an organisation that helps to improve trading terms and conditions for producers of, among other products, coffee and chocolate from developing countries. But why should a baker use Fairtrade ingredients, how hard is it to get accredited and what are the hurdles involved?

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) revealed on Wednesday, 16 January, its new voluntary guidelines to warn consumers about possible allergens in food from food retail outlets, such as bakeries, cafés and restaurants, as well as food that is not prepacked. Two weeks later, on Wednesday, 30 January, the EU Commission went even further and announced an intention to introduce new legislation to make this mandatory.

T here has never been a better time for the cereals industry to cement partnerships across the supply chain, which will strengthen it going forward and increase profitability for all.

What will be the biggest issue your business faces in 2008?

With consumers increasingly opting for ethical products, Costa Coffee has set up its own charity, the Costa Foundation. The company says its aim is to put something back into coffee-growing communities from which it sources its coffee beans. It is currently working in Colombia, Ethiopia and Uganda.

The Big Apple didn't know what had hit it last year, when 50 of Britain's best craft bakers piled off a plane and pounded the sidewalks in a mission to visit the city's finest bakers and retailers.

On visiting Tesco's inconspicuous HQ in Cheshunt, surrounded as it is by Hertfordshire suburban semis, the initial impression is that it's a pretty understated setting for the brain-room of the retailer that accounts for one in every eight pounds that leaves our wallets.

Much is made of 'greenwashing' - the slightly sneery term levelled at businesses accused of hooking on to environmental schemes and painting themselves as tree- huggers. But for once, companies are being asked to take the term more literally and greenwash more. To do this, they need to be washing less.

With constant media attention fixated on spreading the message of a looming recession and crashing stock markets, both in the US and UK, many bakers may be wondering, "How does this affect my business?"

Have you ever wondered why we pay taxes for an Army, Navy and Air Force? No one is going to invade us. If they did, they could never afford to live here and buy a house. Plus, what would be the point in invading us, as most of their friends and family already live here?

A surgeon friend once said to me: "Being an anaesthetist is hours of boredom, with the odd moment of dread panic!" As you well know, dear baker, our job is the very opposite: "hours of dread panic, with the odd moment of boredom!"

As demand for organic goods continues to rise across everything from cosmetics to beer, the category has moved firmly from the trendy into the mainstream arena. While bread has not been one of the strongest organic categories, new research shows that bakers can follow the lead of fresh produce and dairy products. The signals are that a general move to 'premium' within the bread sector has opened the way for greater expansion of this category.

Sam's Cookies, a well-respected bakery firm in Bray, Co Wicklow, just south of Dublin, which has been trading since 1992, is about to face the challenges of exporting for the first time.

Late last year we featured an article from retail expert MPC, saying that the UK must learn lessons from France if it wants to revive bakery retailing on the high street (BB, Nov 30, pg 14). So what do we find on the streets of Lille? The Covent Garden Expresso Bar and Notting Hill Coffee.

A bit like the Eurovision Song contest, Europe has always taken the Bakery World Cup slightly more seriously than we Brits have done. While our cousins on the mainland Continent take the contest to heart, with national heats and everything, Royaume-Uni has consistently scored 'nul points'.