Beetroot Sourdough launched by Yellow Door Bakery

Yellow Door, the award-winning Northern Irish food business, has introduced a new beetroot sourdough bread.

Based in Portadown, county Armagh, Yellow Door has a successful and innovation-focused bakery business supplying customers in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The company has now combined the health benefits of sourdough and beetroot in the new bread.

Gary Dougan, Yellow Door Bakery manager, says: "We look at trends, of course, and how vegetables are as an ingredient are 'on trend', and what we have around us. Everyone is aware of the health benefits of beetroot and so it seemed a great match with sourdough. Its earthiness comes through but isn't over-powering, and the colour is fantastic. As an added bonus we can actually easily grow more beetroot in our own Yellow Door kitchen garden or it is available from local growers.

"We believe, as a company, that healthy food is about more than calories - it's as much about what's not in your food as what is in it.

"We have always baked proper bread every day, with natural ingredients, ferments and starters and lots of proving and kneading; no chemicals, that was just natural for the Yellow Door. We supply around 200 foodservice customers in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and moved to a stand-alone bakery premises in 2012.

"We are really lucky to have an excellent team of very skilled bakers who all understand Real Bread and can tell if it's right just by touch.

"In an increasingly industrialised food system where 'fake' breads dominate, and consumers are often confused we realised that this is not the norm and we should shout about it a bit more. It is one of the things that makes us unique and so last year we joined the Real Bread Campaign and Real Bread Ireland which champion authentic bread making with real ingredients," he adds.

He says the bakery's focus on innovation was also demonstrated last year when it launched a 24- hour proved ciabatta, made with four ingredients, which had " a wonderful depth of flavour and is doing really well in the foodservice market".

Success in the Great Taste Awards and World Bread Awards encouraged the company's commitment to innovation and more ideas were in the pipeline including a "smoked" bread.