ELMHURST, ILL. — Chicago Specialty Bakers, makers of European-style artisan bread, has completed a $20 million investment in its three-year-old bakery in Elmhurst, Ill., by installing a 95-foot-long EasyMac production machine. Manufactured in Italy, the machine makes sandwiches, french toast and other customized baked foods.
The company in the 45,000-square-foot bakery makes bread, biscuits, ready-made sandwiches, pies, pizzas, mini bagel dogs, stuffed dough, quiche and bagel chips. Customers include retail, foodservice and airlines. An older 20,000-square-feet Chicago Specialty Bakers facility in Bensenville, Ill., continues to produce cookies, edible cookie dough, bread and flavored butter.
Chicago Specialty Bakers sells more than 12 million ready-made sandwiches annually to commercial airlines, foodservice and grocery customers. The company offers traditional levain-based, dark-colored, coriander-topped, sweet-and-sour Eastern European rye bread. An example is an Eastern European rye known as “Borodinsky.” Other specialty bread includes Arnautsky, Baltic rye, Orlovsk, Stolovy and Ukrainia.
Company founder Felix Barats immigrated to America from Ukraine in 1980.
“If we don’t continue to offer old world bakery products, baked the way they were intended, they will be lost to the world of gastronomy,” he said. “I am committed to not only offering our current products, but I am always experimenting with new artisan bread products that will set new standards in baking excellence.”
