Hosted at Five Star’s flour milling facility in Suez from March 28 to April 2, the workshop was a “hands on” training – and that is exactly what the bakers were looking for.
“Bakers want to touch and smell, and when we work our hands need to be busy, so the U.S. wheat training was perfect combination of learning by doing,” said Rehab Hosny, a baking consultant for Willows Egypt who praised USW and Five Star for the level of engagement during the workshop. “The two trainers shared important information about flour made with U.S. wheat, showed us how to mix, divide, shape and bake it, then allowed us to join in and do those things ourselves.”
Rosada, Cruz Impressed with Bakers
The “two trainers” Hosny speaks of are Master Baker Didier Rosada, a USW consultant, and his partner Katherine Cruz. Rosada and Cruz lead technical seminars and educational initiatives for USW offices around the world to support exports of all six U.S. wheat classes.
Rosada was impressed by the curiosity of the Egyptian bakers.
“They had many, many very good questions and they really wanted to be engaged in each stage of the baking process,” Rosada said. “It was easy to see they want their end products to be the best. They want their customers to be impressed with their baked goods. So, there were specific one-on-one questions, and a lot of notetakings. They wanted to learn, and we were able to show them how U.S. HRS can work for them.”
Egypt An Important Market
Egypt, along with other countries in the Middle East/North African (MENA) region, also imports U.S. hard red winter (HRW), soft white (SW), and soft red winter (SRW) wheat. The region is composed of more than 30 countries, and as a result has a wide variation of needs among flour milling operations.
“We promote all classes of U.S. wheat across the region, but baked goods in the Egyptian market demand for higher protein, so this workshop was designed to show bakers the advantages of baking with HRS,” said Tarik Gahi, USW assistant regional technical director and administration manager in the USW Casablanca Office. “For this workshop, we invited industrial bakers, artisanal bakers, chiefs and bakers from retail bakeries. They produce several types of finished products, and the workshop helped them meet the goals of their respective businesses.
Gahi noted that private mills in Egypt have purchased more than half a million metric tons of U.S. HRS wheat over the past four years – 70% of that was procured by the Five Stars Group, evidence that USW’s engagement and marketing strategy in Egypt has been effective.
Along with Gahi, USW was represented at the workshop in Egypt by Regional Vice President for Europe and the MENA Regions Ian Flagg, Egypt-based Marketing Consultant Nihal Habib and Milling and Baking Specialist Zakaria Jallali.
Continued Engagement by USW
Last May, a USW Board Team that included wheat farmers from Arizona, Idaho and Nebraska toured flour mills, a pasta factory and an industrial bakery in Egypt – a key supplier to African and Middle Eastern countries.
And four years ago, a trade team from Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Oman spent time learning about hard red winter wheat production, visiting research facilities and meeting with leading wheat researchers as part of a 12-day tour of Idaho, Kansas and North Dakota
Gahi said the recent baking workshop is part of USW’s ongoing effort to promote U.S. wheat in Egypt.
“U.S. wheat has a good and dependable partner in the Five Star Group, and we plan to do many more activities in the future,” he said. “We are surveying the bakers that participated in this workshop to see what they want to learn and how we can help them in these kinds of activities.”
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