List of breads Par-baked bread Bake Your Own Caring for your bread Nutrition Allergy Info How our bread is made		What makes bread special? WE LOVE BREAD! The smell. The texture. The taste. The history. At ACE, we believe that using the very best ingredients, a long fermentation process and the extra care we take to gently shape and bake in a stone-deck oven is what makes our bread special. Artisan breads are a labour of love, made by time-honoured, European-inspired traditions. ACE bakery runs 24 hours a day and the process of preparing a loaf of bread for baking can take in excess of eight hours. But the results make it worthwhile — a tantalizing aroma, a crispy golden crust, a rich, flavourful taste, and a moist, chewy texture. Although the ingredients couldn't be simpler: flour, water, yeast and salt, the process of creating superior bread is long and fairly complex. A day at the bakery A day at ACE Bakery begins as early as 3:00 a.m. when the mixer arrives to weigh the ingredients and mix the dough. Several ACE recipes call for a "sour starter", a fermented mixture of water, unbleached white flour and whole wheat flour that flavours and provides a natural preservative to bread. The mixer must keep this mixture alive by "feeding" it daily. Other breads use pâte fermentée, biga or poolish as starters. When the dough is mixed, the baker divides the dough into batches and sets it aside for several hours for the process called "fermentation". The baker then divides the dough, shapes it into loaves and again sets it aside for several hours to proof. Oven staff monitor the proofing, score the loaves with marks to identify the type of bread and primarily bake them in stone deck ovens. After baking, the fresh loaves are cooled, packed and delivered. Late in the day, the night mixer starts the lunch and dinner bakes and the baking ritual begins again. Top quality ingredients ACE Bakery breads contain only the finest ingredients, natural starters and absolutely no preservatives. • ACE Bakery ingredients are chosen for specific characteristics required to produce the finest quality breads. The building block and primary ingredient of the majority of our bread is unbleached wheat flour. • It is common practice in the baking industry to use flour that has been bleached. Products with bleached flour can be recognized by their super-white appearance. The addition of bleaching agents removes the natural yellow colour (carotenoids) from the flour and changes the nutritional value of the resulting flour. The absence of bleaching agents in ACE flour results in a 'crumb' colour which appears natural and more wholesome. • ACE Bakery uses fresh yeast in the production of our breads. Because of ACE's slow fermentation process, the quantity of yeast is considerably less than other commercially prepared breads. Our Alpine Rye does not contain yeast. • ACE uses starter to leaven its bread products. The starter is a combination of flour, water and yeast that is mixed in different quantities to produce a number of different starters. ACE uses unbleached flour resulting in a ‘crumb’ colour that is more natural and wholesome.   Hungry yet? Find out where to buy our bread.