Maura Mottolese named CEO of Firehook.

Move to bolster organic baked foods portfolio.

Other new products tap varied trends.

Consumers turn to artisan bread for simple ingredients with a story to tell.

Has become a major player in Southern California bread category.

A challenge of artisan bread processing is ensuring steps like dosing, dividing and sheeting don’t damage the dough’s delicate cell structure.

There isn’t room for artisan bakers to compromise on fermentation, but critical labor-saving automation that maintains artisan quality is available.

Automating artisan bread production can be daunting, with many potential opportunities for the bread to lose that artisan quality along the way.

Clean label ingredients like enzymes help artisan bakers reduce ingredient and labor costs. 
 

Artisan bread can be scaled up according to COO Alexander Salameh, but it must be done so carefully.