Healthier bakery fund

Nestled on Scotland’s North East coast, Hame Bakery in Peterhead has been proudly serving the community for 22 years across two locations. 

Patrick Jackson, owner and baker at Hame Bakery, says they make a full range of products in-house from bread rolls to wedding cakes, as well as local delicacy - the buttery. Butteries are an established and much-loved bakery staple in many North East households, where the product originated, and are traditionally made with flour, yeast, salt, and a large amount of lard/fat.

“The main aim was to make a healthier buttery by incorporating wholegrain flour and more seeds, but we made real progress in reducing the fat."

The funding supported Patrick with the time and space to focus on recipe development – all of which has been done in-house. 

Read our article On a roll: North East bakery creates new ‘healthier’ buttery. Read more about Hame Bakery's reformulation journey.

Aulds Delicious Desserts is a frozen dessert manufacturer producing traybakes, cheesecakes, fudge-cakes, pastries and tarts for the food service market across the UK. With an aim to provide their customers with a healthier dessert option on their menu, they applied to the Healthier Bakery Fund. 

Fiona Jackson, Head of Operations at Aulds says that “We wanted to find alternative ingredients to reduce fat, sugar and salt but still maintain the indulgence and high-quality that is associated with our products.”

“One project where we’ve seen positive results is with our baked vanilla cheesecake. We’ve found that by using a different cheese the fat has reduced by 36% and we are waiting on external analysis to confirm results.”

Fiona says that the journey of reformulation has been one of trial and error, and is conscious that replacements or reductions will have an impact on flavour. 

“For us, this project and funding is about the ability to give our customers something different - a quality dessert that can be healthier - and meet a gap in the market.” 

Stockan’s Oatcakes, based in Stromness, is a 4th generation family-owned business that manufactures a range of traditional Scottish oatcakes for UK retail and export. 

Stewart Crichton, General Manager of Stockan’s Oatcakes, says they have successfully reformulated one of their recipes through their participation in the Healthier Bakery Fund.

“Our aim was to reformulate a standard recipe to create a product for a retailer that would benchmark well in terms of taste and texture, but also increase protein while reducing fat and sugar.”

"This funding has given us the confidence to do other reformulation projects with other current and potential customers.”

The Heathier Bakery Fund’s support was spread across different areas of Stockan’s reformulation journey. 

“We used the funding to test production batches, conduct nutritional analysis, and some of it went towards the final pack design.

As the name suggests, Three Sisters Bake was set up by sisters Nichola, Gillian and Lynsey Reith 12 years ago. Nichola Reith says they heard about the Healthier Bakery Fund through Scottish Bakers and started planning how they could incorporate reformulation into their business. 

“Reformulation doesn’t just have to be about changing recipes. We are a bakery that prides itself in handmaking everything. When we first heard about the fund we had various ideas about how it could benefit our business.” 

With their empire biscuit a firm favourite, Nichola knew investment in equipment could make a real difference. 

“Our empire biscuits are one of our best sellers and one thing that struck me is that we have always rolled out the biscuit dough by hand, creating a real size variance.

“We have been able to better control portion size and, as a result, reduce the biscuit’s overall weight by 25%, while keeping the diameter the same, which is a pretty big achievement through one change."

“When we were hand-rolling, no matter how experienced you are, we can’t be as consistent as a machine. So, with the grant from the Healthier Bakery Fund we decided to invest in new equipment that rolls out dough. The rationale was that by introducing this machine we could set a height for the dough and as a result achieve a consistent biscuit.”