Popular TV cookery shows have revived consumer interest in home baking with ingredients for breads, biscuits, cookies, cakes, pastries and pies now highly sought after items by shoppers when browsing the supermarket shelves or online grocery sites.
Convenience, along with health and wellness - to include special diets, are the driving factors for the global baking ingredients category going into 2015 - the market is projected to reach a value of €10,765 million by 2019 (ReportsNReports) with Europe having dominated the market in recent times.
Key players in the global baking ingredients market include Associated British Foods, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Cargill, Corbion, Kerry Group, Novozymes, Puratos Group, Royal DSM and Stern-Wywiol Gruppe - all investing heavily in new products and technologies to maintain a competitive edge over rival brands.
With 'free from' food ranges now highly sought after by those on special diets, grocery retailers are tapping into this trend with innovative 'free from' products to cater for consumers' dietary needs this Christmas.
Dr Eva Detko recently released the 'Christmas Cook Book for Those Living With Food Allergies and Intolerances'. ESM asked her what does she believe has driven the European consumer demand for home baking in recent times? She says that for a lot of people - including herself - baking is associated with the feelings of nostalgia, as well as being a great activity for kids.
"I believe that the increasing variety of easy-to-use cake and flour mixes, as well as cake decorations, must be partially contributing to the growing number of people opting for home baking," she told ESM.
Using such products, people are now able to produce baked goods that look and taste good "fairly easily". Additionally, she says, programmes such as 'Great British Bake-off' inspire people to have a go, along with an overwhelming amount of free resources online such as recipe blogs and videos.
The ever-increasing range of gluten-free pastry mixes and frozen pastry coming onto the market continues to impress her. Even though pastry is easy enough to make, some people still prefer to fall back on something that is ready-made, so it is good to see that this option is available, she explained. "The next step is to make it dairy-free as well as gluten-free, as approximately half the coeliac population reacts to dairy as well."
As food allergies and intolerances, as well as auto-immune diseases such as coeliac, are on the increase, the demand for gluten-free products will continue to grow and we will be seeing the "free-from" sections in supermarkets expanding more and more, concluded Dr Detko.
Award-winning celebrity chef Phil Vickery is an ambassador for Coeliac UK, the leading charity working for people with coeliac disease. He said: "For many years now we have been very interested in the gluten- and wheat-free market, primarily because it was an area that most chefs avoided."
He continued: "I teamed up with Bea Harling and Squires Kitchen to see if we could research, experiment with and cook seriously good gluten-free food." With the worldwide interest, his gluten-free cookery books now sell in 12 countries and has been translated into many languages. "We are keen to continue to develop delicious gluten-free recipes and have many exciting ideas in 2015." The Phil Vickery Seriously Good Gluten-Free mixing products include items such as Vanilla & Raspberry Cupcake Mix and Double Chocolate Fancy Cake Mix.
Beverley Dutton is founder and MD of publisher Squires Kitchen, whose baking magazines Cakes & Sugarcraft, Wedding Cakes and Bake School are now available for purchase from the UK supermarket chains Sainsbury's and Tesco. Dutton said the step-by-step recipes in the current issue of Bake School will help home bakers to develop their "culinary skills using tips and techniques" from expert tutors.
"The recipes identify the latest trends in baking and food styling to make sure those following them are always one step ahead. They're also tried-and-tested by professional chefs."
Squires Kitchen's 2015 Sugarcraft Exhibition will take place at the Farnham Maltings in England on March 13-15, 2015.
© 2014 - European Supermarket Magazine
