Posted on Fri, Mar 12, 2010
Posted by Bonnie Harry on March 12, 2010
Receiving the "Phenomenal Bread" Windmill at the Great Harvest annual convention is a coveted award among Great Harvest bakery owners. Recipients of this year's 7 awards were Jim and Robin Condie (Clackamas, OR), Ted Beveridge (Atlanta, GA), JP and Michelle MacFadyen (Lafayette, LA), Bonnie Alton (St Paul, MN), Jim Hansman (Lakewood, CO), Dan and Lisa Allen (Medford, OR), and Kyle and Chris Skalisky (Wenatchee, WA). Kyle and Chris held the top spot for quality in a new store.
Bake Phenomenal Bread
is the second line of the Great Harvest Mission Statement and has been a core value since the company's beginning in 1977. In a country where most bread is baked in huge facilities or from frozen dough or dry mixes, making bread like you would make it fresh at home with fresh-milled flour and no preservatives or additives, is fairly unusual. We often get comments -- "This is BETTER than Mom used to make". Not to discount Mom's great work, but fresh-milled flour and our unique process make the difference.
Our challenge from the home office has been, "How do we help the Great Harvest bakery owners deliver the best, fresh-baked, made-from-scratch whole wheat (and other) breads to their customers?" While making phenomenal bread may seem like a given for a bread company, baking fresh from scratch with raw materials every day is far from a "no-brainer". Using honey and 100% fresh-milled whole wheat flour, with their multitudes of enzymes and individual characteristics, makes this especially challenging.
Several years ago we started a "formal" bread tasting program as a new service to our Great Harvest bakery owners. Loaves o
f Honey Whole Wheat bread are gathered from each store throughout the year. A group of tasters at the home office in Dillon, MT, taste the bread with critical taste buds and score the breads based on texture, volume, look and of course, the flavor. It's a bit like wine-tasting. Both wine and bread are fermented products with all kinds of nuances of flavors!
Out of the 190 plus loaves tasted, the top 25 scores go into a final round in early November and the top six from that round are the Phenomenal Bread Award winners for stores one year or older. New locations submit a loaf every month and the bakery that scores consistently the highest gets the Phenomenal Bread Award for a new store. All of the results are kept secret until the convention when the awards are announced. It's a hard thing to keep quiet. We get very excited for the bakery owners because we know how hard they work and how much they care about their quality.
Not only has our tasting program proved to be a great way to choose the Phenomenal Bread winners, it's been an excellent way to help owners troubleshoot problems and to help them take their bread to an even higher level. The bread is always good ....but our joint goal is always "phenomenal." In addition to the bread tasting program, we have an excellent bread baking training where owners come to Dillon to learn to bake with no other distractions. In the midst of complexities of running a small business these days, this training is invaluable to assure the adequate knowledge and experience to bake phenomenal bread.
And as far as the tasting we do in Dillon? Sure, it's a tough job as you can see, but someone has to do it!
Posted on Thu, Dec 31, 2009
The first blog post. It feels like I'm the first person at a
New Year's Eve party, nervously waiting for others to arrive. The kind of party
where you don't know anyone very well, but you've heard good things about the
other guests and were invited because you have a lot in common with the group.
I'm hoping that as the evening progresses,
I'll meet some great people and maybe even a couple future close friends.
But first, I need to put on a brave face and introduce myself to the other guests as they enter.
Welcome! I'm Debbie Huber. I love great bread, nice people
and authentic businesses. As a veteran employee at Great Harvest, I've met
amazing small business owners and eaten a lot of whole wheat bread. I've even
baked it myself, and there is not much in life that is more immediately
satisfying than pulling trays of your own bread out of the oven. Except maybe
watching people put butter on a steaming slice, enjoy that first bite and say "wow! Just like my grandma used to make..." or "this is whole wheat? But it tastes so
good..."
I'm going to share stories with you in this blog about the
people that create Great Harvest bread every day in communities around the U.S.
Each bakery is independently owned and operated. If you've been to multiple
Great Harvest bakeries, you've noticed that each bakery owner gets to create a
beautiful small business in their own image. There are common themes that run
through each Great Harvest business, like great tasting bread, but then each
bakery owner adds their own unique twist along
the way. And you'll see that their struggles and challenges as small business
owners are not unique to the bread business.
From the comments on our Facebook fan page, I know that you
also like to hear about Great Harvest bread and how to use it. Thankfully, my
co-workers include many foodies (you should see what happens when we have pot
luck!) and a registered dietician who have expertise in these areas. They will
be sharing their knowledge with you and I'll let them introduce themselves as
they post. Our CEO, Mike Ferretti, has been the driving force behind getting
this blog started and he'll be sharing his insights as well. He's a food and
wine lover too, so don't be surprised if he writes about more than just
business.
That's the plan, but it's not really about us. We hope
you'll leave comments so we can adapt, learn as we go and get to know you. What
do you want to hear about? I'm curious to find out.