Daniel Frank – the Specialist for Sourdough Bread

In December 2018, Daniel Frank was awarded the state honour award for Bavarian bakery crafts – for the third time. Bavaria presents this award to businesses that have proven to maintain top quality for more than five years continuously, as rated in tests by the German Bread Institute. The bakery’s sales figures have also been growing at double-digit rates since 2010. That’s more than enough reason to take a look behind the scenes and to ask what lies behind the secret to their continual success.

In 1958, Daniel Frank’s grandfather Michael laid the foundation for the present bakery just a few kilometres upriver from Riedenburg, in Deising. Over the years he gained valuable experience, which he passed down to his son Richard Frank, who passed his master craftsman's examination in the bakery trade in 1976. That was the incentive to buy the bakery in the Old Town part of Riedenburg, where the Frank bakery is located today.

Four years later, Richard Frank and his wife Anja moved from Deising to Riedenburg, and turned the branch into the company headquarters. In addition to a new bakery, they also opened their first café right next to the salesroom. The bakery is being carried on by Daniel Frank, who is also a master baker and confectioner since 2005. Although Daniel was contemplating other career options at first, an apprenticeship at his parents’ business convinced him to follow in his father's footsteps after all.

Apart from excellent ingredients, the dough also gets its high quality from the method of preparation: Daniel Frank cooks the spelt flour, for example, to make it absorb water better. That way, the bread stays fresh for longer. During the 22 hours of maturing, the natural sourdough is refreshed three times to provide more nutrients to the microorganisms in the dough.

Naturally, the Frank bakery also creates many fine patisseries from puff, filo, and short pastries. The doughs for these specialities have always been produced on a ROLLFIX dough sheeter.

“Until quite recently, we still had a very old ROLLFIX, on which you would adjust the dough thickness manually,” Daniel Frank relates. “Encouraged by discussions with colleagues, we have now upgraded to a fully automatic ROLLFIX plus. The replacement of the equipment and the instruction for operating the new machine from the people at FRITSCH were a smooth success. Ever since, we have achieved a much more consistent dough thickness in our puff and filo pastries and a wonderful baked volume. The purchase was no doubt one hundred percent the right decision,” he says of the upgrade.

And so the business will continue in future, baking goods right there in the main building on the Riedenburg marketplace and bringing them out each day, fresh and oven-warm, straight from the bakehouse to the shop next door. And that’s not all: the Frank bakery supplies delicious baked goods to other sales points in the region, as well as to all hotels in Riedenburg and the surrounding area.