Flatbread Innovation
Need a commercial wholesale flatbread with the perfect crispy edged crunch, a chewy bite, and golden brown toasted bubbles?
Do you need it to stand up to generous toppings without getting soggy or doughy in the middle? And what about Clean Label, low carb, functional ingredients, plant based recipes, and all the other on-trend attributes that consumers are craving? It is easy to get lost in the variables, but when it comes to Flatbread R&D and Innovation, CraftMark Bakery is here to help you find your perfect flatbread.
Our Flatbread Origins: Flatbreads for Sandwiches
An important part of our bakery’s origin story, flatbreads for sandwiches were part of our very first customer contract. After building our high-tech automated bakery, we shipped the first batches of sandwich flatbreads for foodservice in June of 2015 and haven’t slowed down since.
Today, we manufacture private label flatbread destined for delicious folded sandwiches, artisan flatbread pizzas, wholesome breakfasts, pull apart breadsticks and more.
Manufacturing Flatbread: Process Innovation and Flatbread Recipe Formulation
Featured in nearly every cuisine around the world, flatbreads have universal and cross-cultural appeal. Subtle differences in shape, density, flavor, appearance, and the requirements for culinary handling all make flatbread a very deep world indeed. Do you need it par-baked or pre-baked? Does it need to go from freezer to oven, without missing a beat? Will it break or bend when folded? How will it be prepared?
Whether we are matching our customer’s flatbread recipe formulation, or developing an entirely new product for them, our Flatbread R&D and Innovation process starts with a thoughtful inquiry into the culinary requirements as well as the operational context. Listening to our customers and asking the right questions is critical.
Spotlight on Flatbread R&D: The Power is in the Process
When it comes to developing and innovating new food products based on flatbreads, it’s not just about flatbread recipe formulation. We reached out to our own flatbread R&D expert, Jim Little, Senior Vice President of R&D and Innovation for CraftMark Bakery, to glean some insights to share about manufacturing private label flatbread for foodservice and In-Store Bakeries. Jim has over 20 years of experience in both bread and flatbread development.
“The most important thing to know about flatbread R&D is that it is heavily process oriented. It is difficult to match flatbread products, because each manufacturing line is so different, and it is key to have a full understanding of what your line can and cannot do.
In bakery manufacturing, every product is a combination of recipe and process — but flatbreads are unique in that developing and manufacturing them is slanted far more to the process side of the scale. You cannot work isolated in an R&D lab — you have to test and iterate live, on the real production line.
The physical processes, the handling of your dough, the way it goes through the equipment inevitably impacts the ultimate texture and flavor characteristics of your resulting flatbreads. Time, temperature, hydration, aeration, stretching, folding, sheeting, and pressure — these are all different process levers that will impact your resulting flatbreads, fully independent from the actual recipe and ingredients.
If you are making flatbreads for sandwiches, then foldability of the final flatbread is important. Whereas if you’re making artisan flatbread pizza crust, you need a more robust and crusty profile that can stand up to the moisture of toppings. It needs to be parbaked just enough that it doesn’t go soggy or doughy under your toppings, but not so much that the edges become dry and overbaked once prepared in the restaurant ovens.
Once all these performance characteristics are well considered, you also need to understand the right amount of functional ingredients to get the exact characteristics you are going for, and to fit the product claims you need to make such as whether the food will be high protein, low carb and keto friendly, plant based, whole grain, Clean Label, and so on. Gums, enzymes, and the type of flour are all critical decisions. Even a small increase or decrease of protein in the flour will have a huge impact on the performance — with the right amount of gluten you have strength, stretch and the resilience to fold, but with too much the flatbread will be tough and unpleasant.
And let’s not neglect the bubbles! A toasty signature of artisan flatbreads, the bubbles in a finished flatbread are a natural consequence of the hydration and handling of your flatbread dough. Whether the final product should have larger irregular bubbles for an artisan look, or a more regular, small and tight bubble pattern — this is all in the secrets of process and expertise.
The bottom line is that a good Flatbread R&D and Innovation partner must understand the context of your intended menu item, from how it will be prepared in the kitchen to how it will be presented and how the consumer will experience it. Rolled like a wrap, sliced like a bun, eaten whole like a piece of bread, crispy and topped as an artisan pizza, folded like a sandwich, or scored to become a pull-apart appetizer for the table — there is no one-size-fits-all flatbread!”
Make Craftmark Bakery Your Flatbread R&D Team
Innovation is not easy. The right flatbread will be the difference between a blockbuster menu item and a dry, inedible fail. Trust the flatbread R&D experts at CraftMark Bakery to help you navigate the complicated world of flatbread recipe formulation. Whether you wish to develop new flatbreads for sandwiches or pizzas, or optimize an old flatbread recipe formulation for Clean Label, low carb or plant based, fill out the form below and we will send your message to the flatbread R&D team right away.