LUTZ, RBA PRODUCE INSTRUCTIONAL BAKERY VIDEO

ROSEANNE HARPER

CHICAGO -- Lutz Continental Cafe and Pastry Shop here is sharing its philosophy and some practical tips on creating signature products in the bakery, on a new educational video produced by the Retailer's Bakery Association.

The new videotape is the third in a "baker-to-baker" series of instructional aids produced and distributed by RBA, which is based in Laurel, Md.

On the tape, Helga Pearson, owner of Lutz, describes how the signature-product philosophy has brought her family business success from generation to generation. The bakery is known in Chicago for its chocolate-coated tortes and pastries.

Pearson also shows how to create an attractive chocolate-covered pastry from cake scraps, as one of several practical tips she shares on tape about how to minimize shrink.

While chocolate coverings and homemade marzipan are this pastry shop's hallmarks, Pearson also demonstrates some innovative merchandising. For example, miniature pastry platters, featuring five or six different pastries, are displayed in the service case.

This type of merchandising "sampler" offers the in-store bakery customer a service by cutting down on his or her decision-making time, said Ellen Coren Bogage, communications director at RBA.

"The merchandising and production advice in our baker-to-baker videotapes are very applicable to in-store bakeries," Coren Bogage told SN.

RBA is also offering a cake-decorating educational video package based on activities at its Marketplace Convention/Exhibition this spring in Philadelphia.

The trade association captured on tape the full-length cake-decorating demonstrations offered during the event. The tape, which is more than three hours long, shows pastry chefs and cake-decorating experts working on the show floor all day. The technicians demonstrated production and decorating techniques and offered ideas for developing unique, signature products.

Decorators from one retail bakery, for example, showed how to make a Swiss curl cake, a production that RBA says has become popular for weddings. The cake features ribbons of white chocolate, which, as the video shows, are created by pulling a potato peeler across a block of chocolate. Another decorator demonstrates how to create 3-D figures with rolled fondant. The decorator is shown on the tape crafting a jungle scene complete with gorilla, toucans and a tiger.