Success Story: Baker Baier
- Division Sistemas de embutimento e porcionamento
- Posted on 01.07.2021
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Success Story: Baker Baier
"State-of-the-art technology like that provided by Handtmann helps me produce the variety and it greatly simplifies our craft. We thus use cutting-edge technology to preserve our tradition.”
World baker of the year combines tradition and modernity
He is the world baker of 2018. Jochen Baier from Herrenberg. An absolute highlight in his personal and professional career, but also for Baier Bakery, located in Herrenberg since 1835. It was his passion to bake the best possible bread that has made him “World Baker of the year 2018”. It is the ultimate distinction to achieve: “This is like receiving the knighthood, it's the crowning of by professional career. I always have been and always will be a baker with passion deeply rooted in my heart.”
Building blocks of success: Skills. Demeter quality. State-of-the-art technology.
Only very few bakers succeed in becoming a world baker and it takes a lot of skill to get there. An impressive number of awards that mark his career are proof Jochen Baier is truly a master of his craft: Journeyman and master diplomas as baker and confectioner as well as a diploma in business economics of the trade and countless national and international prizes including the world championship title in traditional bread baking and confectioner of the year.
Added to these profound skills is passion. Passion for “baking with whatever Mother Nature can provide us,” as Jochen Baier, author of NATÜRLICH GUT BACKEN (Naturally Good Baking), puts it. He is convinced that “he who allies with Mother Nature, will receive her very best in return”. For almost 200 years, Baier Bakery has baked following this philosophy, which today is more zeitgeisty than ever before. The world baker’s products are genuine, natural and healthy, with grain and flour from one of the oldest Demeter farms in the region and organic eggs from free-range chicken with open-air space.
What I find particularly convincing are the portioner's fast product changes, its weight accuracy and how gently it handles our dough, products and fillings.
Handtmann machine for baked goods by the world baker
Just as his passion for learning and the search for the cutting edge has driven him across Europe and all the way to Japan, he is similarly passionate about state-of-the-art technology: “A lot has changed since our company was founded in 1835, but what hasn’t changed is our passion for fine, high-quality and genuine baked goods, which is today produced using the latest technology, such as the Handtmann VF 608 B portioning machine” emphasises Jochen Baier. “It helps me produce the vast variety of up to 30 different types of bread.”
Variety produced according to the old recipes using modern machinery
While sifting through ancient recipes from the family business, Jochen Baier discovered that it takes, above all, one thing to bake really good bread: time. The secret behind making wholesome, durable and savoury bread is giving the dough time to swell, rise and mature. Drawing on the knowledge of his ancestors, while at the same time relying on the gentle and versatile dough dividing technology from Handtmann, today enables him to successfully produce quality products in terms of taste, appearance and consistency.
At first, only a few types of dough difficult to process by hand, such as very soft coarse meal dough, were processed with the Handtmann machine. One year later, almost anything that is produced in Baier’s bakehouse, from short pastry to nuts filling or butter sheets, is portioned using the Handtmann VF 608 B. Including dough for breads, small baked goods and pastries.
The hygienic design is what impressed me most as an expert. There is no other machine that you can take so unrestrained into the wet room for cleaning.
Propelling the lifework of Friedrich Baier Bakers into modernity
Jochen Friedrich Baier succeeded not only in continuing the lifework of six generations of Friedrich Baier, but also in evolving it to today’s excellence. The world baker from Herrenberg confesses the it was “the joy of delivering top personal performance while baking the most delicious creations” what drove him, taking just as much pride in his Handtmann as he does in his team and his exceptionally excellent baked goods.
