Family blends tradition with technology to bake Armenian breads at downtown Fresno location.

By Paula Lloyd Fresno Bee STAFF WRITER 02/06/03 06:45:13

Sammy Ganimian held a piece of family history in his hands, a battered metal scoop, its handle broken off at the base. 

Sammy and Paula Ganimian and their daughter, Joy Ganimian Aller, in front, take pride in the fact the business is family owned and operated. "We used to scoop the flour by hand," he said, recalling the early years of the family-owned Hye Quality Bakery in downtown Fresno. "We used to mix 50 pounds of flour at a time in an old Hobart mixer," he said.

"It's automated now," said his wife Paula Ganimian.

Sammy Ganimian's father, the late Yervant Ganimian, a master baker, and mother, Grace, opened the bakery business in 1957. The original location at 537 L St. is less than a block away from the current plant at 2222 Santa Clara St., southeast of the Fulton Mall. Sammy and Paula Ganimian took over the family business in 1976.

Today, their daughter, Joy Ganimian Aller, has joined the family business. "It's fun to come to work with my parents," Aller said. "We get along well."

Aller majored in marketing at California State University, Fresno. "It's nice to have someone business oriented in the business," her mother said.

Windows behind the counter of the bakery store provide a view of the machines and oven where large rounds of crisp and soft Armenia cracker breads and bite-size crackers are made.

Sammy Ganimian pointed to a large mixing machine where the dough is assembled before it is fed into a machine that rolls the dough into balls.

"We used to roll them by hand, put them in wooden boxes and cover it with plastic," he said.

"Our bread is shaped, not dye cut" from a large, single sheet of dough, Ganimian said, so there are no dough scrapes to be worked back in. "Recycled dough makes the bread tougher."

A conveyer belt flops the small dough balls into the proofer, where each dough ball is nestled in a cup shaped holder. A chain-driven mechanism slowly rotates the dough through the steamy air as it rises.

As the dough balls leave the proofer they pass through two other machines that roll out the dough to the desired size.

As much as the process is now automated, "there's still a lot of hand labor," Ganimian said. Workers stand at a conveyer belt printed with blue circles to indicate the correct size. Each worker picks up a round, twirls it like a piece of pizza dough, lays it on the conveyer belt and stretches it out by hand until it meets the edge of a blue circle.

The conveyer belt gently lays the rounds onto a rack that slowly moves through a long oven. From the oven the bread passes onto a spiral cooling rack before being packaged, the Hye Roller in vacuum-sealed plastic bags and the cracker bread in flat paper bags.

The plant puts out 24 rounds a minute during two eight-hour shifts, six days a week.

The crisp cracker bread is baked in two sizes, in 16- and six-inch rounds and comes in white and wheat.

The Hye Delight individual crackers are packaged in boxes and come in three varieties, white, wheat and no-salt wheat.

The Hye Roller soft cracker bread was developed 22 years ago, Sammy Ganimian said, at the request of Ralph's supermarket.

"They wanted lessons on making roll-up sandwiches," Paula Ganimian said, which required running the dry cracker bread under water and wrapping them in damp towels until they softened enough to be rolled. 

The soft cracker bread, which is baked for a shorter time than the crisp bread, eliminated that step and makes it easier and faster to create the rolled sandwiches. "This took the mystery out of making the sandwiches," Paula Ganimian said. 

Today the Hye Roller comes in five flavors: white, wheat, pesto, garlic tomato and a sour cream, onion and chive combination. 

Hye Quality Bakery products are sold to markets and delicatessens locally and as far away as Japan, Paula Ganimian said.

In the bakery store the Ganimians sell jars of grape leaves, bags of bulgar and red lentils, books on Armenian history, candy, pistachios, braided Armenian bread and other Armenian specialty foods.

Gene and Kay Mickel of Mariposa stopped by to buy several packages of large cracker bread to take to relatives in southern California. "We put it on our list of places to go," Kay Mickel said, whenever they come to Fresno.

"We used to be much more seasonal, but now we're much more steady, which is great," said Paula Ganimian.

The bakery's busiest time is from March to January. "Right after the Super Bowl it slows down," Sammy Ganimian said. "The Super Bowl is a big sandwich day."

Reprinted from the Fresno Bee, 02/06/03.