A renowned food technologist, Duro Kuteyi, has called on bakers to embrace locally made bread making ingredients, as a way to force down the price of bread by about 50 per cent.
Kuteyi made this call against the background of the bread crisis, which is currently making bread gradually disappear from the breakfast table of most Nigerians.
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Recall that penultimate week, bakers in Nigeria embarked on a 4 day warning strike to draw public attention to the escalating cost of producing bread and other pastries.
After the strike, the price of bread was reviewed upward making bread, which is supposed to be a necessity unaffordable to many Nigerians.
Reacting to the escalating cost of bread, the food technologist who is the Managing Director of Spectra Industries Limited, Mr. Duro Kutey, while addressing the media at the opening ceremony of a model Spectra factory shop, at the weekend urged bakers to be creative by embracing innovative ingredients for the production of bread.
He noted that for bread, which is a necessity to continue to remain on the breakfast table of average Nigerians in the face of the sky rocketing price of imported flour, bakers must begin to look inward by embracing domestic and made in Nigeria ingredients that will not only improve their profitability but also bring down the cost of production of bread significantly.
“A lot of bakers are going out of business and the few resilient ones have increased the price of bread, which is making bread a luxury and unaffordable to a lot of Nigerians. This is mainly due to the scarce forex and the crisis in Ukraine, which is outside the control of bakers. But bakers can be creative about it by looking at local innovative ingredients such as Sobake, which is defatted soya flour produced indigenously by Spectra, Mr. Kuteyi advised.
He stated that by embracing local ingredients, the cost of production will reduce significantly as well as improve profitability as he revealed that 1kg of Sobake in 50kg of wheat flour with an extra 1.5 litre of water in the recipe of bread will give bakers extra yield by 5X500g loaves.
Apart from the fact that this product has a high amount of protein, the lower fat content of defatted soya helps to increase the shelf life span of bread and from the feedback of bakers that are using our Sobake, the product has become a welcome relief for bakers. Mr. Kuteyi stated.
