Hudson Bread
Passion underpins the dedication to invest the time and resources required to bake bread with Old World artisan flavor, appearance and texture. And strong business sense leads such bakers to capitalize on the technological tools available to help bring those truly artisan breads to a wide customer base. Such a merger of art and science is the way of life at Hudson Bread, based in North Bergen, NJ. For the full story, see “Hudson Bread grows its artisan bread business.”
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Hudson Bread, North Bergen, NJ, supplies restaurants and other customers throughout Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Mariusz “MK” Kolodziej, president, gained initial exposure to the world of artisan baking via his father’s bakery business in Poland. Years later in the U.S., he followed his father’s path and opened his own bakery, along the Hudson River near New York City, in 1994. The bakery’s customer base grew, and Hudson Bread moved into its current space in 2006.
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Six Hudson Bread bakery lines are set up for gentle, stress-free dough-handling to develop peak artisan quality in the finished product. They can accommodate dozens of different types of breads. “We have 20 mother doughs that produce up to 200 different products, currently,” says Raymond Million, vice president of operations.
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Raymond Million, vice president of operations, likens the craft of baking bread at Hudson Bread to other artisanal products like fine cheese and wine—all aspire to excellence through careful control of quality inputs and the manipulation of time to achieve characteristic, defining flavors. “Time and temperature controls are the most-important aspects in anything that has to do with dough fermentation. The long, cool proofing process helps develop a fuller spectrum of flavors.”
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“Customers are more cost-conscious than before, and quality is not always priority No. 1,” says Mariusz “MK” Kolodziej, president. “With the advent of large buying groups, pricing is so close—there is very little margin to work with—that sometimes quality suffers.” But instead of cutting quality to remain cost-competitive, Hudson Bread has streamlined operations in order to stay in the game. “We have maintained all the formulations and sizes and have internally worked on efficiencies to continue to offer the same quality at these pricing tiers.”
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Hudson Bread has long capitalized on strategic investments in operational efficiencies in order to drive its business forward, offering the volume its customer base seeks. “We utilize technology, along with traditional baking techniques,” says Mariusz “MK” Kolodziej, president. All sourdough starters are created in-house, and every Hudson Bread product includes a preferment, typically naturally yeasted, liquid sours.
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The Hudson Bread product range encompasses dinner rolls, sandwich rolls, retail loaves, boules, free-form breads, Pullman loaves, focaccia, flatbreads, breadsticks, crisps and lavash made with a variety of dough types, such as French, ciabatta, 7-grain, whole-grain, Italian, semolina, fruit and nut, and brioche. Despite adherence to a core lineup, experimentation continues. A recent project centered on creating spouted-grain bread—an option Raymond Million, vice president of operations saw as a possible option for some people who have experienced intolerance issues, since sprouted grains are easier to digest.
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Hudson Bread uses a customized fermentation room to proof all of the bakery’s products before baking. This step in the process is so vital to the quality of the products that Hudson Bread includes “Naturally Cold Proofed” as part of its company logo. Raymond Million, vice president of operations notes that the room’s temperature is kept at about 42 to 44°F. All products hold in the fermentation room for 12–24 hours. “This is fermentation held slow and steady, just like making wine, naturally allowing the dough to rise to the right size.”
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Shipping frozen product is another market capability that holds significant potential for Hudson Bread. “We’re strategically planning how to help the sales force best utilize its territory—how to broaden the territory, how to reach greater distances,” says Million. And while many bakeries are moving into frozen breads these days, Hudson Bread seeks to bring differentiation to the available product range.
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A retail bakery and café opened adjacent to the wholesale bakery in 2008, still serving customers today, selling its signature bread, buns and rolls and offering a menu of sandwiches, salads and smoothies. A second café location in Secaucus, NJ was added in 2015, and a third café will open soon at a nearby Rutgers University campus. The Hudson Bread Café business is run by Mariusz Kolodziej’s wife, Katarzyna.
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“We started the café because people were coming to the loading dock to try to buy our bread,” says Mariusz Kolodziej, president. “It’s also a good marketing tool—and an educational tool for us to find out what customers are looking for.”