Spanish Baker Launches Olive Oil-Based Pastry Range

Europastry brands itself as an indus­trial bak­ing com­pany ​“with a start-up mind­set,” try­ing to change the norms of tra­di­tional bak­ing.

In con­junc­tion with Verdeo, a com­pany ded­i­cated to cre­at­ing new ways to use olive oil in food prod­ucts, Europastry has launched a range of pas­tries in Spain known as ​‘Olive.’

Including crois­sants, donuts and muffins, these pas­tries are made with 100-per­cent olive oil instead of but­ter and palm oil. Iris Roldán, the com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­ager at Europastry, told Olive Oil Times the new pas­tries are health­ier and more sus­tain­able while main­tain­ing tra­di­tional fla­vors.

The final prod­uct con­tains mono­sat­u­rated and polyun­sat­u­rated fats, antiox­i­dants and polyphe­nols and main­tains a good crum­ble, appear­ance and fla­vor.

They also have less sugar and cho­les­terol, mak­ing them attrac­tive to the con­sumers as a health­ier indul­gence that pro­vides the plea­sure of eat­ing a pas­try with fewer down­sides.

“This range of pas­tries is rev­o­lu­tion­ary because it uses olive oil as veg­etable fat,” Roldán said. ​“Thanks to the inno­v­a­tive Verdeo process, we man­aged to solid­ify the olive oil using sus­tain­able best prac­tices, thus replac­ing sat­u­rated ani­mal fats and hydro­genated veg­etable fats.”

According to Europastry, ​‘Olive’ pas­tries con­tain more than 84 per­cent unsat­u­rated fats. Extra vir­gin olive oil, for exam­ple, con­tains the small­est pro­por­tion of sat­u­rated fat, about 15 per­cent. Meanwhile, palm oil con­tains 50 per­cent sat­u­rated fat, mar­garine and lard around 40 per­cent and sun­flower oil about 15 per­cent.

Verdeo took years to develop the process indus­tri­ally and over­come the chal­lenges of con­vert­ing olive oil into a solid form, which may be used in bak­ing. Unsaturated fats are usu­ally liq­uid at room tem­per­a­ture, while sat­u­rated fats are solid.

Verdeo’s goal was to incor­po­rate olive oil and its unique health ben­e­fits into a bak­ing process that can be used at both indus­trial and arti­sanal scales. According to the com­pany, this new bak­ing method is less costly and reduces the car­bon foot­print of bak­ing.

In 2016, the International Olive Council esti­mated for every liter of vir­gin olive oil pro­duced ​“in a mature semi-inten­sive orchard with an aver­age crop yield,” there is net car­bon seques­tra­tion of 8.5 kilo­grams.

Meanwhile, more coun­tries con­tinue to scale back on palm oil imports and pro­duc­tion as a result of the crop’s high envi­ron­men­tal toll.

“This process brings us closer to one of our goals, to make a health­ier, more sus­tain­able and top-qual­ity pas­try,” Roldán said. ​“With Verdeo, we rev­o­lu­tion­ized the world of pas­tries, thanks to an inno­v­a­tive process that has such an essen­tial prod­uct in our Mediterranean diet, olive oil, at its cen­ter. This range brings together inno­va­tion, health and fla­vor, and opens a range of pos­si­bil­i­ties for the future.”

Roldán added that the ​‘Olive’ project is one of the first suc­cess sto­ries of the Baking the Future accel­er­a­tor, a six-month incu­ba­tor in which Europastry invites star­tups to come to their research facil­ity in Barcelona and develop their prod­ucts.

“Europastry has accom­pa­nied Verdeo, sup­port­ing the startup with all its expe­ri­ence and tech­nol­ogy,” Roldán said. ​“This project was one of the first suc­cesses of our Baking the Future accel­er­a­tor, the objec­tive of which is to pro­mote the tal­ent and devel­op­ment of the most cut­ting-edge star­tups in bak­ery inno­va­tion.”

In September, Baking the Future will announce five new projects with the same goals in mind as the ​‘Olive’ line.

“We are sure that it will be a suc­cess and that they will pro­vide us with rev­o­lu­tion­ary ideas that will change the way we con­ceive bak­ing,” Roldán con­cluded.

• Europastry