With a mere fortnight to Easter and non-stop eating of buns, you might be interested to know that a small bakery in St Ann, Golden Loaf Bakery yesterday copped the King of Buns Award, at the third staging of the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM)/Jamaica Flour Mills (JF Mills) King of Buns Competition.

The competition took place at the University of Technology’s new hotel block at the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. Handling the proceedings was media personality Jennifer “Jenny Jenny” Small with careful adjudication from UTech School of Hospitality lecturers, a participative student audience, and, of course, the eager competitors: Golden Loaf, National Baking Co Ltd, Maxfield Bakery, Purity Bakery and Hammond’s Pastry Place. Up for grabs were — First Prize — 27 palettes of baking flour; Second Prize — a KitchenAid mixer and Third Prize — 10 bags of baking flour.

How It Worked...

Twelve bakeries were sent invitations from ADM/JF Mills to participate in the King of Buns competition. Five accepted and submitted label-less buns. Unique code identifiers were used to identify the bakeries.

Judging was based on a three-category system: the external characteristics (the shape, crust and volume of each bun), the internal characteristics (texture, grain, colour, slicing ability and distribution of fruits) and the third, taste (blended flavour).

When the flour had settled, chief judge Winston Piper shared, “Today was very exciting, and I’m impressed with the buns we tasted. Getting the perfect bun requires exact formulation: you may get a bun with the right texture, but lacking in something else. So the task of the baker is to balance formulation, taste and ingredients. The person who balanced properly came out on top,” he said.

The winner was Golden Loaf, with National Baking Co Ltd second and Maxfield Bakery third.

Janelle Garcia, human resources manager at the winning bakery, Golden Loaf, was delighted with the win.”I don’t have words to describe the feeling, but I came here feeling like a winner — our bun is the best — and I’m leaving as one. Our buns are made with a lot of natural ingredients — wet sugar, molasses and a lot of love, too.

“I’ll make the suggestion to my boss for the prize [the flour] to be used to bake more buns and donate them.”

A delighted ADM/JF Mills Trade Marketing and Distribution Manager Donna-Kaye Sharpe is looking forward to next year’s staging and highlighted the camaraderie among bakers that the competition forges.