About Bakers Journal

Bakers Journal

Overview

Bakers Journal is the trade magazine of the Canadian baking industry, serving bakers, pastry chefs, chocolatiers and bakery owners in every province. Published by Annex Business Media of Simcoe, Ontario, it combines a long-running print magazine with a daily news website at bakersjournal.com, e-newsletters, video programming under the Bakers Journal TV banner, podcasts and webinars. The Baking Association of Canada describes it, in its own material, as Canada's oldest and most respected bakery trade magazine, and Annex's portfolio listing identifies it as the officially endorsed publication of the Baking Association of Canada (BAC); both characterisations come from the industry bodies involved and are presented here as such.

The magazine's readers work in every part of the trade — independent retail bakeries, commercial and industrial plants, wholesale and private-label production, research and education. Its goal, stated in its own description of itself, is to highlight the successes, trends and people of Canada's baking industry, so that readers open its pages and find themselves, their colleagues and their work represented.

History

Bakers Journal published its first issue in July 1938, founded by W. E. Floody. In the magazine's own retelling of that first editorial, Floody dedicated the journal to supplying "master bakers in all sections of the Dominion with an interesting, instructive and progressive journal," promising "the greatest good for the greatest number" and signing off with the line "Bakers Journal is at your service." The new magazine appeared just as Canada's bakers were organising nationally: the Allied Trades of the Baking Industry had formed in 1932 and the National Council of the Baking Industry in 1939. The magazine reported through the wartime years of rationing and flour enrichment debates — and carried a recipe that became famous in Canadian baking, Tomato Soup Cake — and, as the magazine itself has noted, shut down for two years in the early 1960s during difficult economic times before resuming publication.

Unlike many Canadian trade titles absorbed by large media corporations, Bakers Journal spent its first five decades with individual or small-company owners. From Floody in the 1930s, ownership passed through a series of hands, the magazine relocating from Toronto to Beaconsfield, Quebec, and back to the Toronto area along the way. Ernest Naef owned and ran it into the 1980s; in 1989 Naef sold Bakers Journal to Newfoundland Capital Corp. (NCC). Mike Fredericks, then NCC's director of development, handled the file and worked with Naef, who stayed involved after the sale.

In 1997, Mike and Sue Fredericks bought the assets of NCC, and Bakers Journal became part of their new company, Annex Publishing & Printing Inc., in Simcoe — the acquisition that laid the groundwork for what became Annex Business Media, today one of Canada's largest business-to-business publishers. Sue Fredericks served as the magazine's publisher in the Annex era's early years. The title has remained with Annex ever since, through the publisher's growth to dozens of brands and its 2024 transition to employee ownership, keeping its print tradition while adding the digital products the BAC's description highlights: podcasts, a YouTube channel, e-newsletters, virtual events and webinars.

Content and Coverage

Bakers Journal covers the business, craft and science of baking in Canada. Its website organises coverage into news, features, business and operations, education, ingredients, technical and health and safety reporting, recipes and trends. A typical 2026 news file included the Baking Association of Canada launching an Alberta Prairie chapter and investing in chapters across the country, an FGF Brands acquisition of Première Moisson's commercial bakery operations, front-of-package labelling requirements taking effect, and coverage of the Pastry World Cup Americas selection. Technical features in the same period ranged from ultra-low asparagine wheat developed through gene editing to sourdough starter research and flour performance analysis.

The magazine is woven into the industry's institutional life. It covers the BAC's conventions, annual general meetings and policy positions in depth, reports from the annual Bakery Showcase trade show in Toronto — its editor's June 2026 letter took up the workforce questions raised there — and follows the Farmer-Miller-Baker gatherings linking growers, millers and bakers. Its recognition programs are long-standing industry fixtures: the Jake the Baker Award for innovative baking businesses, the Bakers Journal Business Awards and Innovator of the Year honours, an Inspirational Bakery of the Year contest, and earlier contests such as the Ultimate Pie competition. It also covers competition baking, including the Bakery Cup of Canada and Team Canada's outings at international events — among them Team Canada's win in the Coupe du Monde Americas selection at IBIE in September 2025, which sent the team forward to represent Canada in Paris in 2026.

Audience and Reach

The magazine's readership spans Canada's baking trade: bakers, pastry chefs and chocolatiers who are, in Annex's portfolio description, mainly entrepreneurs, managers and executives, working across retail, commercial and industrial, wholesale, private label, research and development and education settings. Annex's portfolio material states that Bakers Journal reaches 90 per cent of independent bakeries across Canada; that is the publisher's own claim, presented as such, and no independently audited circulation is asserted here. The print magazine's masthead has described it as published ten times per year by Annex Business Media (ISSN 0005-4097), with a one-year Canadian subscription priced at $32 in the masthead edition examined for this profile — dated figures, given as published.

Digital Presence

BakersJournal.com operates as a daily news service for the industry, with new stories posted through the week — its news archive showed items dated through August 2026 at the time of the site's most recent full crawl for this profile, including association, supplier and regulatory news. Around the website sit the brand's other channels: Bakers Journal TV video editions and event highlights, a podcast featuring interviews with industry figures, webinar programming, virtual events such as its Virtual Innovation Day, and e-newsletter subscriptions bundled with print. The magazine's video archive covered the May 2026 Bakery Showcase and the Bakery Cup of Canada in detail, and its features and technical sections are updated alongside the news file.

Ownership and Organisation

Bakers Journal is published by Annex Business Media, the Simcoe, Ontario-based business-to-business publisher founded in 1997 by Mike and Sue Fredericks, whose purchase of Newfoundland Capital Corp.'s publishing assets that year — Bakers Journal among them — started the company. Annex grew into Canada's largest B2B media company, with roughly 60 brands, and in 2024 completed a transition to an employee-management partnership; the Fredericks moved to board co-chair roles and Scott Jamieson serves as chief executive. Within Annex, Bakers Journal sits in the food portfolio alongside sister titles Food in Canada, Canadian Packaging and Canadian Pizza; Annex's portfolio listing has named Martin McAnulty as the group's publisher. The magazine's editor is Colleen Cross, whose editor's letters appear in current issues, including a June 2026 letter reporting from Bakery Showcase in Toronto; earlier editors in the Annex era included Brian Hartz and Naomi Szeben.

Contact and Availability

Bakers Journal is published by Annex Business Media, 105 Donly Drive South, Simcoe, Ontario, N3Y 4N5. Subscriptions to the print magazine and e-newsletter are offered through bakersjournal.com, where readers can also follow daily industry news, watch Bakers Journal TV, hear the podcast and find entry details for the magazine's award programs. Editorial correspondence is invited through the website; the editor's published contact number, printed in her June 2026 editor's letter, is 416-843-8905.