Wednesday, March 20, 2019

What It Takes to Be a Successful Kosher Bakery

Kosher bakeries are traditionally intertwined with Jewish culture, religion and family life. In addition to being a place where one can find all sorts of celebratory baked goods for Jewish holidays, Zomick’s kosher bakery is also a hot spot for foodies and the health conscious.

Over the past few years, a growing number of people have started to look for kosher symbols on their food products, and not just for religious reasons, but because they believe the food is safer and better for their health. For example, part of keeping kosher means not mixing meat and milk products. So Zomick’s bakery offers a lot of dairy-free and meatless options, perfect for those on a vegetarian, vegan or lactose-free diet. The bakery also attracts a mix of Jewish and non-Jewish clientele.

There are many specifications to producing kosher baked goods, but for Zomick’s Bakery, this is the day-to-day routine and a standard the bakery committed to when it first opened in 1966. Just because a bakery sells items usually associated with Jewish cultures, such as bagels or matzah balls, it doesn’t mean it qualifies as a kosher bakery. In order to be kosher, a bakery can only use ingredients that have been certified as kosher and can only use kosher cooking methods. Kosher bakeries are regularly inspected and supervised by a rabbi.

Contrary to popular belief, rabbis do not bless food to make it kosher. Instead, a rabbi inspects the facilities to make sure they are up to kosher standards and that the ingredients used to make the food are kosher. A rabbi also examines how food is prepared. For example, a rabbi might check to see if a utensil came in contact with meat and dairy. To adhere to these rules, Zomick’s uses products that are certified by widely accepted kosher organizations.

Zomick’s bakery sells all kinds of traditional bread, like Zomick’s challah bread, as well as delicious pastries, buns, cookies, danishes, cakes and other sweet treats. For festive holidays, they also make seasonal treats such as babkas, rugelach and biscotti. The bakery also features classic kosher Jewish food baskets made from traditionally delicious recipes.