In the course of my work I travel to the New York City area quite frequently. When eating out I like to figure out whose bread is being served with my meal. Bakeries such as Sullivan St, Pain Quotidien, Amy’s, and Balthazar all have styles unique to themselves. The New York wholesale bread market is like most competitive markets in which a small number of bakers are chasing after a finite number of customers, and most of you would probably say that accurately describes your market. The most successful bakeries find a way to differentiate their breads, allowing them to create a market for their unique products, bring in more customers and charge a little more. The wonderful thing about bread is the ability one has to experiment with its variables. Creating a unique product is largely a matter of deciding what you and your customers want and then implementing the necessary steps to achieve it. In my mind one such bakery to have developed a very thorough identity for their breads is Balthazar Bakery in Englewood, New Jersey.




I have known Paula and “B” at Balthazar Bakery for a few years and have always admired the breads they produce. On a couple of visits to their bakery recently we talked about how they went about creating an identity for their breads and the implications that identity has for the bakery as a whole.




Paula was hired to open Balthazar Bakery at the same time Balthazar (the restaurant) was opening at 599 Broadway in the Spring of 1998. During the three years that the bakery was in Manhattan the focus was retail. They worked in a cramped space below street level and mostly supplied the restaurant next door and the retail shop above. Wholesale was not an option given the limited space but the proximity to their retail customers gave them the feedback they needed while developing their style. The retail storefront is still there at 80 Spring St. but in 2001 the production moved to Englewood, New Jersey

where they were able to expand their business into wholesale.

As every one of you knows, the retail bakery business is very different from wholesale. I believe Balthazar was successful in evolving their business from a retail operation to a wholesale oriented bakery by keeping the original identity and style of their breads intact. Paula and B describe the Balthazar style as this: wet and dark. Their doughs are highly hydrated and as a result the breads come out dense with great chew and flavor. They bake in large heavy ovens at temperatures around 520 degrees, and they only pull the loaves when they are just on the edge of burning giving them a rich and varied crust color which contributes to the flavor of the whole loaf. Paula says they are looking for three distinct colors in their crust ranging from tan, to dark brown, to some areas of darkest brown (almost black). Their large signature rye rounds are baked the darkest and then left to sit and cool slowly giving the flavor of the crust a chance to penetrate into the loaf.




If you get the chance to visit Balthazar’s production space you will immediately notice that this is a bakery that employs a lot of bakers and not a lot of equipment. One of the trade offs for having heavy wet doughs is they do not run well on a lot of the available equipment. This is a decision that Paula and B. had to make as they started to expand the Balthazar bakery from retail into wholesale. Balthazar bread had come to be known in and around New York by its distinguishing characteristics and had attracted a loyal following. One of the keys to Balthazar’s continued success lay in maintaining the identity of their breads while expanding production.




As B and I were talking during one of my visits he pointed out that while their style of bread requires that skilled hands work with it, it is those same skilled hands who must deal with the mounting pressures of increased production. At Balthazar he says there are two areas that require frequent attention: production vs the ideal loaf and the baker at the oven vs. delivery.




In the first instance there is the loaf that lives up to the style that is Balthazar Bakery. But the bakers charged with mixing and shaping the daily production feel the pressure of working with a large quantity of wet dough which can be troublesome. With any difficult production it is easy for corners to be cut and for the quality to slip. To maintain the style the production bakers require periodic “refocusing” on the methods that produce the bread desired by Balthazar customers




Then comes the demand of getting a large number of loaves through the oven. At Balthazar there is the color standard which must be met, and wet doughs needing to be baked into large, very dark loaves take a long time. So, while the bakers are striving to maintain the style as defined by the dark color, the need to load the trucks for delivery hangs in the air. One can quickly see how easy it would be to slip away from the standard that identifies your bakery and how much work it takes to keep it there.




Both Paula and B. pointed out that Balthazar is one of the more expensive bakeries in the NYC market. But they have a clearly defined style that appeals to a certain type of customer. They have their niche, and people will pay for the bread because of what it is. It would appear that if you give your breads an identity - a well defined style, you are no longer competing with every other bakery in the area, and you can afford to charge more for your product. If there was ever a market to test this theory it would be the New York wholesale bread market and Balthazar is proving that they can be successful making the distinctive loaves they, and others, find desirable.




So, why not take a look at your breads and see if your style is clearly defined. If it isn’t now, was it once? Did the elements defining your style slip because of production pressures? I think we have seen that Balthazar has successfully addressed both of these issues and continues to be a successful bakery. If you are in search of a style you can try some of the techniques that Balthazar uses or try some of your own.




(This article first appeared in Baking Buyer - Nov/Dec 2005)