FDBusiness.com

DuPont Nutrition & Health has launched a new bakery concept inspired by Nordic thin breads, as it seeks to revitalise Europe’s struggling bread market and reengage consumers who have turned their backs on traditional wheat-based offerings.

The Nordic Light Thins innovation is part of a series of DuPont alternative carbohydrate concepts, designed to help bakers tempt consumers back to supermarket bread shelves.

Soft and dimpled with a thickness between that of toast and tortillas, the thin bread concept contains 50% oats, buckwheat and barley in the flour – Nordic grains that are recognised for their high content of fibre and other important nutrients, the ingredients company said.

DuPont’s powerful blend of enzymes and vegetable-based emulsifiers, PowerBake Thins, keeps the thin breads feeling soft and fresh for up to 14 days in ambient storage, it added.

Forecasts for bread sales from Mintel suggest low levels of growth until 2020 – particularly in Western Europe – with 70% of consumers “making a conscious effort to follow a healthy diet”. Bread’s high-in-calorie, sugar and carbohydrate reputation has seen it lose out as a consequence.

“Thin bread has long been a firm favorite in Sweden and Finland, where consumers treat it as a sandwich bread,” explained Jan Charles Hansen, principal bakery application specialist for DuPont.

“Nordic Light Thins is made with half the refined wheat flour of standard wheat bread. Among the fibre and nutrients, the concept contains beta-glucan, which helps to reduce high levels of blood cholesterol.”

Other concepts in the DuPont alternative carbs series draw on the bioavailable nutrients in sprouted wheat, ancient grains and seeds – and the novel hybrid grain tritordeum, which is derived from wheat and barley. The concepts include a barley breakfast biscuit, sprouted whole grain bread and nutritious tortillas.

For bakers with extrusion facilities, DuPont has also developed a protein-enriched, high-fibre concept for extruded bread sticks.