Belgium has often unfairly been the butt of European joke-telling. To bastardise a well-known saying, think of a famous Belgian and you will invariably find that they are imaginary.
Not so in the food world, of course. The culinary delights of the country have been recognised for centuries. And the UK is about to be even more exposed to this in the form of one particular pastry company: Pidy.
Founded in 1967 as Patisserie Industrielle Dehaeck Ypres by André Dehaeck, father of the current chairman Thierry, the firm prides itself on retaining hand-crafted artistry via small-batch or mass production.
It started out making vol-au-vents, those traditional favourites at posh parties. Now it makes ambient, ready-to-fill pastry products from tart bases to bouchées larger relatives of the vol-au-vent and doughs, from puff, choux and short-crust pastry to sponge dough, croustade and low fat pâte à foncer. And from its production strongholds in Ypres, Belgium, Halluin, France, and Inwood, New York, Pidy is becoming renowned for brave trailblazing with innovative designs and unique pastry bases.
Its sales offices were established in Northampton, England, in 1997 and it already sells to Brakes, Délifrance Marks & Spencer, Spar, Tesco, Waitrose, Aldi and Lidl and works with large processors to create finished items. But having appointed a new general manager, Robert Whittle, last summer, the business feels the time is ripe for a renewed push into the UK with a wave of new product development.
Why now? Whittle argues UK demand for artisan pastry products has reached critical mass. As a result, bakers, caterers, cafés and restaurants and their suppliers, want products that meet the demand without painstakingly crafting everything from scratch.
It's a powerful case. How well that sector performs in the UK in 2010 remains to be seen, but undoubtedly many firms want to preserve high quality while cutting corners legitimately.
"In the café sector, we see a growth in the food side, especially from independents," says Whittle. "Our aim is to become the supplier of sweet and savoury options that don't need a big serving area. Our Coffee Cup and Tarto Presto! have a lot of potential."
The growing lack of expertise in the bakery sector is also creating a gap in the market for a player that can deliver products that look like they have been hand made, says Dehaeck. "Finding skilled staff is a nightmare for a local baker. And it's hard for a supermarket to find a skilled baker to supply them. That's where we can help."
An excellent example of Pidy's approach is the trusty manufactured vol-au-vent, which has traditionally required reheating to give it a crisp texture. "One customer in Belgium is selling 3M a year and I know they don't follow the reheating instructions," says Dominique Demeulemeester, Pidy's corporate marketing manager. "We are developing a vol-au-vent that keeps its crispiness and taste for two to three months without reheating.
"We are the only company in the world with a ready-to-fill puff pastry vol-au-vent that you don't have to reheat." Whittle adds: "We are seeing the resurgence of the vol-au-vent in the UK there's a surge in retro-eating."
That's just the tip of the iceberg or pastry crust, in this case. In August 2009, Pidy seized on the healthy eating trend by launching Tarto Presto! kits, consisting of 24 shortcrust tartlets and a 1kg pack of 3% fat creme patissiere for wholesalers supplying foodservice channels. The product has an attractive one year ambient shelf-life, common to many of Pidy's creations.
Mini waffle cones; Cuppys canapés; and Fusion Tapas canapés in boxes of 100 portions, including 15 varieties and shapes made from puff, choux, shortcrust or crispy pastry closely followed Tarto Presto! "Our top sellers in the UK are quiche cases, but the area growing the most is the canapé sector," says Whittle. "There's a real interest in their different flavours, textures and tastes."
The latest inventive volley from Pidy has a traditional and contemporary feel. It includes the Artisan Quiche shell, based on 'farine bise', a light, wholemeal grain which results in drier dough that can be cut more easily.
Pidy's new Sablé Breton circular and square patisserie and dessert bases add a twist to another longstanding favourite, claiming to deliver a lighter, more airy product, flavoured with Breton butter with sea salt.
"Bakeries went back to a very traditional Sablé Breton pastry in the past two months," said Robin van Oudenhove, Pidy's corporate sales director. "Nobody has made ready-to-fill Sablé Breton, but we did it."
In all of this flurry of invention, it's clear that Pidy is dedicated to providing practical solutions for its customers. But the company goes further, demonstrating a flair for design. Dehaeck certainly has a keen artistic eye, as a glance around the Ypres base and his on-site living quarters reveals. Both sport paintings and photographs displaying shapes and textures reminiscent of Pidy's pastry designs.
The most topical outworking of this fascination with form are Pidy's Trendy Shells circles, triangles and squares which come in sweet butter and neutral dough to create a base for dessert or savoury items.
Previous concoctions, such as Spoonettes spoon-like pastry bases the Duobelle a wavy pastry base that can be dual-filled and the Coffee Cup, which can contain hot and cold fluids, have won design awards.
Often this innovation has called for bespoke machinery to deliver it. Dehaeck says: "We used our own engineering for the Spoonette as a way of protecting ourselves. Our rouleau and cream horn machine [at Halluin] was 100% developed for our company." Until six months ago, the latter machine even had a box around it so production staff didn't know what it looked like, he explains.
In fact, Pidy's projects have given birth to Dewilde, a standalone industrial engineering company based in Ypres, opposite the main Pidy bakery.
And its creativity is not restricted to product design or engineering. Pidy is branching out into transparent, free-standing blister packs that make more of an impact on wholesalers' shelves.
The next best thing since sliced bread for the UK market from Pidy will be frozen pastry products of artisan standard. The use of frozen pastry by restaurants has formerly been criticised by celebrity chefs such as Heston Blumenthal and Gordon Ramsay. But Pidy believes it has made a breakthrough in the area, with a range of pastry bases.
"Frozen pastry is easier to fill," says Oudenhove. "Dry pastry breaks easily. Frozen is hard, but when you thaw it, it gets softer."
Whittle adds: "In the next few months, innovation is coming through our frozen raw dough range for caterers and bakers. We have the facilities to store a plentiful supply." The range is being presented to Brakes and independent distributors serving UK high street stores and restaurant chains.
By now you may wonder how the products are made. Pidy's annual production totals 300M pieces. European processing consists of the 20,158m2 Ypres site, focusing on puff pastry and including warehouse space for 4,500 pallets, and the 20,580m2 Halluin facility. This second factory can store 5,000 pallets and deals with choux dough, shortcrust pastry, pressed puff pastry, genoise sponges and 'spiral wound' products, such as the cream horn cases and rouleaus.
Pidy uses the French and Dutch puff pastry production methods. The French style entails extruding a layer of butter or margarine between two sheets of raw dough, whereas butter is mixed with the dough for the Dutch method. Thousands of leaves are built up to produce the 'mille feuille', giving the best quality feuillettée patisserie its light character.
Taking the example of vol-au-vents, once industrially mixed, the dough is left to settle for almost two hours. Waves are created in the dough to relax it. The two dough layers, the base and top ring-like layer are mechanically cut out and stuck together using brine. Waste is reused or sent to anaerobic digesters.
Products are sprayed with egg to provide a light colour and baked for 24 minutes. The entire process takes about two and a half hours. Items are then cooled in cooling tunnels prior to packaging. Robot pickers such as AB Robotics' FlexPicker aid the packing process.
Pidy achieves a 12-15 month shelf-life for most products by limiting the moisture level of pastry to significantly below 9%, the point at which moulds form. Fresh pastry, by contrast, contains 18% moisture. Products reabsorb moisture when filled. The firm can also precoat items to slow the absorption rate.
Obviously there is far more to pastry-making than the average domestic kitchen bears witness to. And given Pidy's continued commitment to customer service and innovation, 2010 may see even more. Next year, Belgium may just carve an even bigger niche for itself on the UK food stage. FM