The Ultimate Battle for Foodservice Bread

It’s an age-old debate…. should we buy bread fresh each day from a local bakery, or have frozen alternatives now caught up on quality?

In most kitchens buying frozen bread was seen as cutting corners, a sign of laziness or imagination/skill. Still, most kitchens didn’t have the spare time, space or staff capacity to ferment their sourdough mother and dedicate time to a long process to create a great loaf.

For years I had a hybrid approach. My “speciality” loaves always came in fresh each morning from the local bakery, but my burger buns and standard bread were from my dry store supplier and were frozen; here was my thought process.

I, along with the whole of the UK, became obsessed with real bread, proper sourdough with a long fermentation and minimal ingredients; this meant sourcing a proper bakery and daily deliveries; as we all know, real bread only lasts a day.

This provided me with an incredible product but also a problem; we always had “day old” bread to use up in exciting ways, either breadcrumbs for coating everything from arancini to fish or to be used up in treacle tarts or stuffing for our Sunday roast pork. But what frustrated me the most was that we always had trays of bread drying out around the kitchen.

Frozen burger buns simply made sense; instant portion control and ease of costing alongside virtually zero waste meant I was sold almost instantly. Of course, I went for the Brioche option, didn’t we all?

But now the tide is turning, the “industrial” bakeries have broken the code and started to produce some incredible, and as close to authentic, artisan breads as I have ever tasted. I challenge you to do a blind tasting with some and see if you can tell the difference.

Now the same thought process that I used for burger buns has come to apply to my artisan breads; simple pricing, ordering, storage and lack of wastage has meant I may have been convinced to go to what was considered “the dark side”, buying frozen bread! 

My honest opinion is to get some samples and approach them with an open mind, bake them correctly and try them, and you might be pleasantly surprised.

Mark Lloyd

“Mark has been an industry professional for over two decades, working in outstanding venues in the UK and across Europe, including well known TV chefs and Michelin starred chefs. He has also been on various TV and radio channels over the years and is writing for some of the most popular food publications in the country.

Having been a head chef for many years, Mark has now stepped away from the stove full-time and his expertise is now being passed on through training, consultancy and demonstration cookery, both in person and online.”