Specialty bread makers are on a roll
The variety of breads being served in Las Vegas restaurants is, you might say, rising. Long gone are the bland and the boring.
"The ideas have just grown in leaps and bounds," said Tony Madonia, vice president of Great Buns Bakery. "Artisan products, pretzel products, fruit-type products — raisins, cranberries, different kinds of dried fruits and nuts. Whatever can be placed together, we’re figuring out ways to do it."
Madonia said Great Buns has more than 1,000 wholesale customers across the valley, and 1,500 items in its database.
"And I don’t think we could have dreamed up a third of them," he said. "Chefs have brought us so many different ideas. Right now we’re working on a seven-grain square roll with a multigrain topping. It just doesn’t end."
"We’ve changed a lot in the last few years," said Jean-Phillipe Dufoin, co-owner of Blue Blanc Rouge. "I feel the passion American people have now for food, because they want to discover new flavors."
Traditional American foods have always included a lot of breads, Dufoin said, "but it was always soft bread."
Today, he said, we "love the different flavors, the different crusts, the texture; there’s a big jump now. It can be from Italy, from France, from everywhere."
"You’re seeing pretzel products, cheese products, raisin-walnut," Madonia said. "White chocolate is a hugely popular roll," and they produce a white-chocolate-raspberry bread that a couple of customers use for French toast.
Jennifer Curland, sales manager for Bon Breads, agreed that overall "people want more rustic. They want a bread with a crust on it." But, she said, what a chef and/or owner chooses to include in their bread basket can differ greatly from restaurant to restaurant.
"Some want very unique, rustic, European-style," Curland said. "Trendier restaurants want a really cool, different flavor profile. Some want that old-fashioned soft roll. Others want a mini-baguette made in a stone oven. It really depends on the market they’re trying to get to."
Which, as Madonia said, gives rise to lots of requests, some more successful than others.
"Seaweed was definitely the weirdest," Curland said. But Bon Breads owner Carlos Pereira gave it a try.
"Carlos didn’t like it, and told them," she said.
Lately, they’ve been getting a lot of requests for breads containing cheeses and bacon. Even a truffle brioche, Curland said.
"Two of the richest things you can eat," she added.
Her own personal favorite: feta bread, with chunks of feta and herbs, is like "the best part of a salad." That’s one of the company’s biggest sellers, she said, along with bacon-onion and white-chocolate walnut.
But Bon Breads’ No. 1 seller remains its baguette, "and that’s what we started with," she said.
Pretzel bread has been popular for the past few years, with a staying power that Curland finds somewhat surprising.
"We probably make eight different shapes of pretzels every day," she said.
The appeal?
"I think it takes them back to their childhood," she said. "You were lucky, when you were a kid, if you went shopping with your mother and she bought you a pretzel and a lemonade."
"Everybody likes a soft pretzel," Madonia said. "Why not see it in a roll that works well with dinner?"
Great Buns also makes different shapes and sizes of pretzel breads for different uses.
"It’s not just a roll, but also sandwich-type rolls, squares, rectangles," he said. "It never ends."
Jim Freehauf, chief operating officer of Majesty Bakery, said a 3-inch-long pretzel roll has been a common request lately. And he has a theory for the increased quality and diversity appearing in local bread baskets.
"I think with bread not being an overly expensive item, it’s kind of an easy way for a restaurant to give the impression to the customer that it’s a little bit higher-end, at the same low cost structure they’re looking to keep," he said.
Even fast-food chains, he noted, are improving their breads, with some basing burgers on ciabatta rolls.
"It’s become more accessible, some of those different artisan, rustic breads," Freehauf said.
"I think people are more educated," Madonia said. "The bottom line is being able to go out to restaurants giving you more options. It’s very competitive. We have the best restaurants in the world here. With all of that competition, they want people to see something special. They want them to come back."
Which seems to bemuse Dufoin, just a bit.
"It’s really funny," he said, "because bread is always the same stuff — it’s going to be flour, water, salt and something to ferment."
Contact reporter Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@review journal.com or 702-383-0474.
