FINLAND – Fazer, a family-owned company offering bakery, confectionery, biscuit and grain products as well as food and café service has introduced insect bread to grocery stores, for the first time in the market.
According to the company, the novel product, called Fazer Sirkkaleipä (Fazer Cricket Bread), is the first hand-baked cricket bread.
The company has been developing insect bread to be included in its assortment of in-store bakeries since the summer,
The ban on selling insects as food in Finland was removed on 1 November 2017.
“We wanted to be in the forefront of food revolution. We want to boost growth in the bread category with hand-made artisanal bread, also in the future. In the Fazer in-store bakeries, we can easily bake and test different kinds of novelties.
The first-in-the-world Fazer Cricket Bread is a great example of this,” said a thrilled Markus Hellström, Managing Director of Fazer Bakery Finland.
Fazer Bakery is an innovative actor that constantly revamps its bread category by introducing new kinds of grain and plant based taste sensations to consumers.
“According to the “Suuri leipätutkimus*” survey on bread conducted in Finland, good taste, freshness and domestic origin are the main criteria for bread.
Finns are known to be willing to try new things, and the Fazer Cricket Bread is an easy way to get a feel of food of the future,” Markus Hellström continued.
“We can see signs of a ʻbread renaissanceʼ, a new coming of bread. Finnish consumers value hand-made bread. We have 300 professionals in our in-store bakeries who bake bread by hand from the very beginning,” he continued.
According to the company, the crickets used in the cricket bread are dried and ground into powder and then added to the flour.
One Fazer Cricket Bread contains 70 house crickets, as the crickets are light and they constitute 3% of the weight of the bread.
“The leading star in our bakery products is always excellent taste. We made crunchy dough to enhance taste and increase mouth feel.
The result is delicious and nutritious. Cricket bread is a good source of protein. Insects also contain good fatty acids, calcium, iron and vitamin B12,” said Juhani Sibakov, Director, Innovation of Fazer Bakery Finland.
According to Sibakov, everything points in the direction that, in the future, insects will be important ingredients in food products, including in the Western world.
“Mankind needs new and sustainable sources of nutrition. According to research, of all the Nordic countries, Finns have the most positive attitudes towards insects. We are looking forward to seeing how our novelty bread is received”, Juhani Sibakov added.
