Labels for bread, pastries and other bakery and confectionery products are currently a hotly debated topic. Until now, labels for bakeries and confectioneries were not as important as identifying the bakery, and bakers only included the grammage and composition on the labels. Currently, bakers' duties in this area have changed.

Labels for bread, pastries and confectionery
Labels for bread allow you to mark a bakery product by printing on special paper that can be baked together with the bread or added to a bag of bread. Both paints and paper should have a special certificate for food products. Until now, bakeries had a minimum obligation to inform customers about products, so the labels were as small as possible. Currently, EU Regulation 1169/2011 has introduced a number of restrictions and new obligations for the entire food industry, so bread labels are also changing. They will definitely have to be larger because they will include a table of nutritional and energy values, as well as information about allergens, GMOs, and several other information important to the customer.

Labels for bakers
Changes and new obligations have become the subject of lively discussions on bakery forums and printing forums, where printers of bakery labels consult. The reason is the lack of preparation of bakers to fulfill these obligations, and the biggest problem is calculating the nutritional values ​​of bread and bakery products. The basic question that almost always appears at the beginning of exploring this topic is the topic described in the article Nutritional values ​​of bread before or after baking?

These other doubts that arise in bakers in the context of new regulations are natural and cannot be underestimated, because bakers have not had such obligations so far and do not have experience in determining nutritional values. In Poland, bakeries are most often a family business, founded by a father or even grandfather, continued by subsequent generations, passing on the secrets of baking technologies and recipes. However, new times force a change of approach and learning, or looking for other solutions. The most frequently used solution is outsourcing services, i.e. in this case, specifically, commissioning someone to calculate these nutritional values. However, as can be seen from the analysis of statements of people dealing with such services, cooperation with bakers is difficult and still remains in the sphere of the risk of error. Let's start with an example of a statement on the forum:

"(...) For some time now I have started calculating nutritional values ​​for bakers' labels, which means I have to get a recipe from the bakery to calculate it. It's unbelievable what I get, bakers simply don't know how much they pour into the kneading bowl every day. I get a recipe where it is obvious to the eye that it is a thin glaze and not a dough, when I call the bakery I get a reply - add 10g of flour and it should be fine. The biggest problem is with salt. The amounts that they write in the recipes are from 0.6kg to 2.6kg per 100, this is where I find it easiest to detect an error."

This statement perfectly sums up the problems with labels for bakeries. The conclusions are also obvious - the problems will disappear if bakers start by refining their recipes. It's a very simple matter - after refining the recipes, it will be easy to calculate the nutritional values ​​yourself, or using a program for calculating nutritional values. You will no longer have to pay for laboratory analyses or outsource the calculations to external companies, paying several hundred złoty for an analysis.

Program for calculating nutritional values ​​on labels for bakers
Knowing the recipe, regardless of whether it is specified in kilograms or percentage, it is easy to substitute nutritional values ​​for calculations in the Foodcal Nutritional Value Calculator program. You do not even need to know the values ​​of individual raw materials, because in principle the calculator has its own raw material database, which completely covers the bakery's needs, and by calculating the values ​​for your recipe, you can add individual raw materials to its composition with one click, so you can have the result of the calculations in less than a minute for one recipe. This is important because every entrepreneur has little time and does not want to waste it on such non-profit production matters. However, the time and costs saved when using the program are pure profit. The average cost of calculations for one recipe of bread or cakes is in the range of several zlotys, even in extreme situations it does not exceed PLN 10. For example, the cheapest other way to obtain these results is to order calculations from a printing house, which costs about PLN 70/piece, so with 100 calculations a year, it is a cost of PLN 7,000, which the bakery must cover additionally from its already modest income. A package of 100 calculations in the Foodcal Calculator program is exactly PLN 895, so almost 10 times cheaper than the cheapest form so far and almost as much as one laboratory analysis. In addition, Foodcal program users have two advisors at their disposal at all times, including an experienced food industry technologist, who help free of charge with any bakers' problems and answer questions by phone and e-mail.

Are you a baker or confectioner? Do you calculate nutritional values ​​for labels?

Contact us - CONTACT - we have free trial access codes for the Foodcal Nutritional Value Calculator discussed above.

Do you have a question about calculating nutritional values ​​- call or write to the technologist for free advice.
Tel: 781 269 595
E-mail: pomoc@nutrition-calculator.pl