The health bug has gotten ahold of the baked goods of the world, and bakers everywhere are scrambling to find ways to keep up with the health trends of the day.

Thankfully, ingredient suppliers are working hard to research and develop new combinations and solutions for bakers whose products need a kick-start down the road to acceptance as a better-for-you product.

This trend, of course, has been going on for more than a year now, what with low-carb cutting a huge swath through the bakery industry, causing many bakers to reassess, reformulate, and sometimes repeal, products in their lines.

Marty Ginsburg, a marketing representative with Caravan Products Co. Inc., recounted to SF&WB last summer the wild-goose chase that ingredient suppliers had to embark upon.

“The baking industry has taken quite a hit over the past year due to the high carb counts [of] most bakery items,” Ginsburg said at the time. “We were forced to make mixes with [fewer] carbs by removing or replacing sugar and by substituting flour with fiber and vital wheat gluten.”

Those substitutions threatened to dry out the products unless other tinkering by ingredient technologists occurred.

Of course, now that low-carb is on its way (albeit slowly) out the door, ingredient suppliers still don’t have a lot of room to breathe.

Health and wellness is still a big deal, and bakers are looking for ways to incorporate those ideals into their products, without losing flavor. In some cases, particularly in the bread segment, more new flavors are being demanded by bakers. Adding nuts, fruits or the big up-and-comer — whole grains — are popular requests.

But most suppliers are taking to the challenge like a duck takes to water, and consumers are reaping the flavorful benefits.

Puratos, for example, made a splash at Europain by unveiling a new logo and a new brand. Daniel Malcorps, CEO of Puratos Group, announced that Patisfrance, a specialist in the subtle, refined art of French pastry, has been a considerable asset to the group and has given Puratos an ambassador for French pastry.

Meanwhile, Puratos was promoting its three main solutions for bakeries in the form of mixes.

Soft’r provides solutions for all soft-good productions, Frostec is Puratos’ offering for bakers of frozen dough, par-baked frozen dough and pre-fermented frozen dough, and Sapore solutions consists of different types of aromas and sourdoughs, regardless of base.

For artisan bakers, though, Puratos had on display its revolutionary new product, O-tentic. The product comes in two varieties, O-tentic Origin — lending a long fermentation flavor to products — and O-tentic Durum — lending a typical Italian flavor to products.

“It’s a new category of active bakery components based on sourdough,” announced Peter Deriemaeker, worldwide sales director for the group. “O-tentic enables the artisans to bake breads with the taste and shape of the good old days, taking into account the needs of today’s bakers.”

Lastly, Puratos is pushing its way onto the healthy-living bandwagon too, providing bakers with mixes that keep their products from being shunned by health-conscious consumers.

Under the group’s Great Taste & Wellness Solutions, Puratos offers products such as its Improver for Reduced Fat Croissant and Altima Reduced Fat Croissant product. The two combined promise perfect workability, layering and volume of the mix and excellent volume and mouthfeel and a short bite on the end product. The group’s Tegral for Reduced Fat Cake promises great-tasting cake with only half the fat (11.5 gm. versus 23 gm. per 100 gm. of standard Satin Crème Cake).