Innovation and tradition guide Bakery de France’s Alexander Salameh

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Innovation and tradition guide Bakery de France’s Alexander Salameh

27 Oct 2025

Annie Hollon

Annie Hollon is a journalist, copywriter and social media strategist from the Dallas, Texas area. She found a love for magazine writing during her time at the University of Alabama where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, double majoring in public relations and English. Beyond writing, you can find her expanding her library, attempting to teach herself the guitar and trying new hobbies.

KANSAS CITY, MO — While evolving trends have sparked some successful niches in the market, Alexander Salameh, CEO of Rockville, MD-based Bakery de France, remains intentionally focused on the baking company’s core product.

“The right way to make sourdough has not changed for a very long time,” he said. “As long as we stay true to that, we can continue improving on how we honor the time-tested way of making our bread.”

Focusing on product integrity — while producing at scale — has been a tenet of Salameh’s career in baking and also at the heart of his leadership.

The key, he said, is investing the time and effort to ensure alignment. It’s something that can never be taken for granted, and that’s a lesson he’s learned growing up in a family of bakers. In truth, that’s inherent in any family bakery.

While his parents are still involved with the company, Salameh takes pride in the family dynamic that exists for the business and the brand. Having worked with his parents at the bakery for decades, Salameh has put the respectful, open exchange of ideas into practice. It’s a manifestation of the need to balance modern innovation with time-honored tradition, and for Bakery de France, that’s the heart of its culture.

“I have to give my parents a lot of credit,” Salameh said. “They’ve always been open-minded people and people who empower. We’ve never been afraid to do things a little differently, and that’s been a big part of our success and who we are as a company. We’ve always been able to have open dialogue without ruffled feathers or bruised egos. I want to preserve that.”

Preserving it means building trust, starting on the bakery floor. Salameh carries on his parents’ foundation by empowering — and trusting — the people in key positions at the company. It’s a leadership style that prioritizes good ideas over hierarchy or sticking to how things have always been done.

As he thinks about advancing technology, he looks at how it can benefit not only the operation but also the people. Automation is seen as a tool to empower the workforce by providing opportunities to learn new skills on the line or in other areas of the bakery.

“Automation can increase capabilities in different ways,” Salameh said. “It can be an opportunity for a baker’s helper to become a line operator, or for a line operator to become a technician, or for a technician to become electromechanically certified.”

It’s about engaging with innovation that makes the people — and the product — better. In terms of artisan bread, that means incremental improvements over time.

“We’ve never been afraid to do things a little differently, and that’s been a big part of our success and who we are as a company.” — Alexander Salameh | CEO | Bakery de France

Those improvements bring a level of sophistication that can only be understood in the finished product. That’s when automation puts the bread first, rather than creating an automated process to make bread that only looks artisanal.

Whether it’s automated production lines, robotics or state-of-the-art programming, Salameh doesn’t shy away from technology … as long as it supports the core of artisan integrity.

“All of these things can be done in a way that preserves the essence of what we do,” he said. “At the end of the day, we’re bakers. We want to improve efficiency and increase throughput without sacrificing the quality of the bread.”

That’s where Salameh’s operational experience comes into play. To him, time is an ingredient; it’s non-negotiable. Fermentation can’t be cut to run product faster, so creating efficiency requires intentionality.

“It’s possible to build an industrial, automated process and keep the requisite time in place,” he said. “What we won’t do is sacrifice quality for the sake of operational excellence. Quality is not a lever that can be pulled; we have to build the process around what the product needs to be and incorporate automation into it. We plan for the time we need and honor it without being at odds with the throughput.”

Ultimately, producing artisan at scale is a balancing act, creating a product that could be considered perfectly imperfect, while at the same time adhering to strict customer specifications. It’s a fine line that Salameh has spent his entire career carefully walking.

“When you can’t sacrifice quality for efficiency,” he said, “you learn how to produce the best quality, efficiently.”

In that regard, Salameh holds the line for living up to the reputation of true artisan bread that, while celebrating artistry through its variability, retains the same quality from generation to generation.

With a long runway still ahead of him, Salameh is building and maintaining a bridge between tradition and innovation.

“I want to always remember how we got here,” he said. “That doesn’t mean doing things the same way. It means the ‘why’ has to stay the same. I believe the ‘why’ drives what we do, not necessarily how we do it. I want us to stay open-minded about how we do things but always remember why we do it.”

This story has been adapted from the August | Q3 2025 issue of Commercial Baking. Read the full story in the digital edition here.

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