05 Aug Biospringer’s Culinary Center: the partner for success
Francisco Andre is the new Global Application Manager at Biospringer. He explained to Laurence Vercoutère (our Global Communication Project Manager) why, according to him, the Biospringer “Culinary Center” application laboratory is today the partner in our customers success. He talks about passion, innovation, product benefits, taste building and also value proposition.
The Culinary Center network is showed as the partner in your customers success. Can you tell us more about this network? What is its main mission?
“Sure! In our regional network of application labs, Food technologists provide customer support in the use of yeast extracts in a wide range of formulations of food and beverages. In particular:
- We focus on the use of yeast extracts to improve the taste of food
- Within Biospringer, we test new products from R&D and support the innovation process
- We develop knowledge about ingredients, food formulation and processes
We cover savory applications such as soups, broths, sauces, snacks, seasonings, processed meat and more and more of vegan applications like vegan cheese and meat analogues. And not only in the savory segment… Indeed, we have found very interesting benefits of yeast extracts added into sweet goods and drinks. To name a few: boost creaminess, modulate brown notes like cocoa and caramel, masking off-notes of high intensity sweeteners.
We are passionate about food with a big focus on taste: how to make products with good taste using our yeast extracts? How to achieve delicious taste for new products? We are well trained to taste the final products and evaluate the impact of our ingredients in the finished goods.”
If I understand, you help your customers to innovate. How do you “build the taste”?
“When we cook at home, we are constantly playing with food components such as proteins, amino acids, fats, sugars. Many reactions occur to build the final taste of the products we enjoy. If we take meat for example: usually a long cooking time tends to develop more powerful taste and complexity in the dish. With yeast, we have a similar approach! The yeast cell is very complex and full of natural components. According to the process we choose to obtain the final extract, we will concentrate some of those components that play a huge role in the taste it brings. All the complexity of a yeast cell is our working tool to build the taste.
Clearly, we know that some amino acids (the units that compose proteins) and nucleotides (that compose the cell DNA) boost taste, bring umami taste and also strengthen notes such as grilled, roasted, cooked…
And flavor is a complex concept. First, we have the five basic tastes: salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami. Then we also have the aroma we smell while we eat (meaty, chicken, grilled, herbs…). Yeast extract added into a food interacts with all the food components and complements the overall taste.
Because of this complexity, we are also constantly looking to improve our capabilities and expertise on taste and flavors, either in the application knowledge or in the analytical and sensory profile methods. We also count on Lesaffre group R&D support and we partner with external centers, ingredient suppliers and universities.”
“We believe it is an efficient way to develop ourselves, looking for the expertise where it is”
We understand that yeast extracts are at the heart of your activity. What is your approach to define the benefits of your yeast products?
“We have a lot of data resulting from our application history from all of our Culinary Centers around the world, mainly based on our evaluations from tasting sessions. Like I mentioned, our big focus is on taste, and especially good taste. Our sensory team makes sure we are trained to identify all relevant taste descriptors we find in yeast extracts.
Every time we taste a formulation, we consider specific benefits that the yeast extract is bringing. For example flavor improvement, meaty notes, rounding up the profile, salt or sugar reduction and many others…
From all this data, we are building now a new approach, that we call “value proposition”. We first organized our results per category of application: soups and broths, processed meat, meat analogues, and so on. Inside each, we highlight the benefits per product at a specific dosage, building our benefit map. We also consider market trends and requests per category. Today we have a clear view of our strengths and where to focus to improve even more and move to another level. This is our roadmap for the future. I will give you a concrete example in the very dynamic category of meat analogues. Today, we know we have great solutions to bring chicken notes or roasted/grilled notes and we have a clear challenge to develop beef notes to complement our capabilities.”
What are the next steps for the Culinary Center? Do you have news to share with us?
“Given the clear demand to vegan products, it is clearly one of our focus, to develop and improve formulations of meat and cheese analogues. We know that yeast extract is an essential ingredient in this type of formulation. Therefore, we want to be able to bring expected meaty notes and higher taste complexity and intensity. We want our consumers to have great tasting products!
On top of that, we have heavily invested in new equipment to our Lab facility in France. It allows us to explore new fields of application: processed meat, sweet and bakery applications, and more.”
With his team and colleagues, Francisco Andre, global applications manager, wants to be the partner of success. In this purpose and thanks to Biospringer’s expertise in yeast extract, he does everything to help and support customers to innovate.
Biospringer is a specialist of yeast extract and is recognized as a historical key player and global producer. Its expertise through teams of technologists, flavorists, and expert tasting panels, ensures total safety and high quality of all the products manufactured and sold in the world. In addition, its global network of Culinary Centers is dedicated to finding technical solutions for its customers in order to bring good taste to their recipes in line with the current natural, vegan, and clean label food trends.
