It’s time to get au naturel with your baking. Natural colors and flavors are one of the challenges of clean label or natural baking. So let’s dive in to taste and see!

We start with one of the most storied flavors: vanilla. Daphna Havkin-Frenkel is a biologist and food scientist, as well as owner and manager of Bakto Flavors—a company that specializes in natural flavors for gourmet goods.

Daphna has spent many years focusing on the flavor vanilla, and the process behind it. The world of vanilla is a fascinating one, from farming the plant, to its extraction, to the market surrounding it. Daphna and Dr. Lin discuss all aspects, like:

• What makes vanilla so unusual?
• What’s the science behind the curing process?
• Conventional vs. organic methods
• The vanilla crisis
• Labeling vanilla

If you’d like to learn more about the vanilla world and using it as flavor, learn more at www.baktoflavors.com

Natural Colors

To learn more about the colorful side of natural baking, we’re joined by Taygun Basaran, VP of Sales and R&D for Chef Master. He shares how the FDA handles food color additives and where natural flavors fit in.

Also discussed:

• Sources used in natural colors
• What factors affect them in baked goods
• What makes them fade, and how to fix that

While natural colors may still present some challenges, there have been some great strides made with technology to help them hold their own.

Visit chefmaster.com to learn more about natural colors.