An artisan food producer has launched a new garlic baguette, as it seeks to make a dent in the £350m-a-year speciality bread market.
Anglesey Garlic’s new Go Garlic baguette uses ingredients grown and sourced on the island of Anglesey, in North Wales. It is available in farm shops across the region, and the producer has a number of other garlic-inspired products in development such as garlic and onion savoury marmalade, and increased production of its existing garlic mash and garlic roasted potato products.
The company thinks that its home grown Anglesey garlic is the only commercially grown crop of its kind in Wales, and is targeting the mass retail and foodservice sectors with the garlic baguette.
Anglesey Garlic’s James Hooton said: “We’ve been farming here since the early 1960s, and growing garlic for about ten years to supply our two farm shops: Hooton’s Homegrown Brynsiencyn, Anglesey and Hooton’s Homegrown at Fron Goch Garden Centre Llanfaglan, Caernarfon. We have recently started growing more garlic with the aim of adding value to the product.
“Our Go Garlic artisan garlic baguette is the first product we’re launching. Garlic bread is an obvious choice for our flagship product; it’s the first product you think of when it comes to garlic, and is loved by people of all ages.
“We use a really generous amount of garlic, more than you would find in an average shop-bought garlic bread, and make them with a mix of wheat and rye flour which gives it a really traditional taste and texture. The baguettes are rustic in appearance and each one is unique.
“We approached Cywain for support a couple of years ago when we first had the idea of developing the Anglesey Garlic side to the business. They’ve been a great help in a number of ways, and were even able to source market intelligence for the garlic bread sector.
Nia Môn is development manager for Cywain, a project created to bring added value to primary produce within the Welsh agricultural sector: “The Hooton family has shown how there are multiple ways of adding value to produce grown in Wales,” she said.
“Over the last couple of years we’ve helped James access a variety of support, from marketing assistance to product development.
“Garlic is a niche product in Wales, and James and his team are doing a fantastic job of developing innovative new products and maximising the potential of home-grown produce. A gap was identified in the market and Go Garlic is responding to that with the launch of this garlic bread. Anyone can grow garlic in small quantities, but to grow it commercially and to the quality they have achieved takes a lot of dedication and expertise.”
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