This bakery company in Klingenberg depends on Cetravac vacuum conditioning to stabilize the quality of its regional bread specialties for sale in its 21 branches under the region’s climatic challenges. Additional benefits: volume, shape and crispness remain constant throughout the day, and generate a big turnover increase for the Franconian company.

 

Focus on bread and bread rolls

Heinz-Gerd Köhler operates a bakery company in Klingenberg with twenty branches and a quite clearly focused concept. This centers on what every child in Germany associates with a baker: bread and bread rolls.

Cetravac’s vacuum conditioning has been an integral part of the production chain since 2012. A “regional specialty” was the initial background to the investment in a Cetravac plant. Klingenberg is situated in the valley of the river Main, where weather conditions often cause crusts, bread and rolls to soften quickly. Cetravac’s vacuum conditioning stabilizes them. Köhler depends on a large proportion of pre-swollen flours to ensure the wheat baked products stay fresh even longer. They are the core of the ‘Köhler’ concept and product range. Around 60% of the entire flour is soured and pre-swollen by a variety of wheat sponge doughs and four different rye sourdoughs. The concept also includes regional raw materials. A decision is taken together with farmers and millers as to which cereal varieties – including ancient ones – will be grown, milled and baked. The selection never becomes boring. There’s a constant flow of new things to try out, in keeping with the time of year, celebrations or events, whether in football or of a regional character.

Köhler processes white baked products as well as baguettes, seeded wholegrain rolls, croissants and lye pretzels entirely through the vacuum cooler. Vacuum conditioning caused a surprising but welcome success with the three kinds of Mainwurz bread, a regional specialty made from spelt flour, whose dough preparation takes three days. Its volume and shape are more stable, crispness is retained for longer, and sales shot up by more than half within a few weeks of changing over to vacuum conditioning. An equally pleasing development occurred to the business in artisan breads and baguettes baked in a wood-fired oven before being vacuum-conditioned and departing on their way to the branches.

A summing-up by Heinz-Gerd Köhler, owner of “Der Brotmacher”:

“Cetravac once, Cetravac for ever – there’s no doubt about that”

Der Brotmacher depends on Cetravac’s vacuum conditioning plants for rack trolley loading. You can find fuller information about our Cetravac plants here

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