2012 Asheville Bread Festival

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the eighth annual Asheville Bread Festival. Asheville is a neat place nestled in the mountains of North Carolina. I love Asheville and when you add bread to the mix, it just doesn’t get much better than that. Even though Asheville has a small population, they have more artisan bakeries than most states. For bread enthusiasts, the place and the event is just awesome!

The theme of this year’s festival was “Local Grain, Local Flour, and Local Bread”.  It featured experts on local grain production, milling, and baking with local and heirloom wheat. It was a fun event!

The festival started with the bakers’ showcase where 20 local, artisan bakeries displayed their breads. I met some really neat bakers and tasted some of their wonderful breads. I lot of beautiful and delicious bread was sold and eaten that day.

 

I particularly liked these Bavarian Pretzels.  My friend and I enjoyed some pretzel balls (pictured on the left) with spicy mustard. They were so good I kept going back and getting more. I even took some home. Yum!

Bavarian Pretzels

Beulah’s Bavarian Pretzels

During the bakers’ showcase, I met Emily Buehler, the author of Bread Science. She did an experiment with some sourdough bread. I will be conducting this experiment myself and posting about it soon so stay tuned for that. Emily also led a “Hand Kneading for Beginners” class which I didn’t attend, but I’m sure it was fun!  I did get her book, and I’m excited to learn more about the science of bread.

There were so many breads and so little time to enjoy them all. Believe me, I tasted as many as I could, but there was only so much room, even for small bites. I took photos of the rest of the breads to enjoy later and to share with you. I wasn’t able to get photos of all of the breads on the tables because there were a lot of folks vying for those breads, but I think you’ll get a sense for the types of breads that were there. They were awesome!

Be sure to scroll down to see the rest of my recap.

 

After visiting the bakers’ showcase, we attended a couple workshops. Some of the workshops were full by the time I registered for the event, but we were able to attend a very informative session on growing wheat. This session was on Developing non-commodity wheats for local uses and flavor. I’ve had a bee in my bonnet for the past year or so to grow wheat locally and this session only heightened that desire. We’ll see if I can actually do it, or better yet, get someone else to grow it for me. More to come on that… hopefully!

As I mentioned in my previous post on Gluten-Free Waffles, I also attended a session on Milling for the Home Baker: fresh flour from local grains. Here is a shot of one of the hand mills that was demonstrated during the workshop.

The gentlemen that was supposed to lead this session was unable to attend due to a rare illness where he couldn’t be around flour for awhile. Pretty ironic, if you ask me. So, Debi Thomas, a local baker from Wildflour Bakery in Saluda, NC led the workshop.  Debi has been running her bakery for 20 years. They grind their flour daily so she has a lot of experience baking bread and milling her own flour. It was very interesting to hear her thoughts on milling. They also make some interesting breads in her bakery.  One of their signature breads is called Boogie Bread. It’s made with all kinds of grains and ingredients, including kelp and molasses. It’s from an old recipe that I hope to obtain someday.

Several other workshops went on that day that I didn’t get the opportunity to attend.

• Peter Reinhart hosted a workshop on New Frontiers in Baking: Gluten-Free and Sugar-Free.  He has a new book coming out this summer (with his co-author, Denece Wallace) that addresses these techniques.
• Dave Bauer, of Farm & Sparrow Bakery did a workshop on Baking with Southern Rye: From Milling to Bread, Pastry, and Pasta.  They milled locally grown wheat and baked pasta in a brick oven.
• Lionel Vatinet held a session on Ciabatta and Pizza. He covered some Old World methods for making Ciabatta and pizza. I would’ve loved to attend this session. I attended one of his sessions last year and he is a hoot.
• Sharon Burns-Leader did a workshop on making pretzels and English Muffins using local and whole grain flours.
• One workshop demonstrated the Carolina Ground Flour Mill in action.  It was the same time as another session so I couldn’t attend.  I’ll have to go back and visit so I can see the mill.

All in all, it was a very informative day. I learned a lot of new things and met a lot of interesting people.  I look forward to going back next year.

 

Happy Baking!

Cathy

 

Shaping Breads with Lionel Vatinet at the Asheville Bread Festival

One of the workshops I attended at the Asheville Bread Festival was led by Lionel Vatinet.  Vatinet is a Master Baker extraordinaire.  During the workshop, Vatinet demonstrated how to shape different types of breads.  Watching a Master Baker at work was really something to behold.

I hope you enjoy this slideshow of Lionel Vatinet shaping breads at the Asheville Bread Festival as much as I did learning from him.  He has a such passion for his craft; it was a joy watching him work.  He’s also funny and engaging which made learning experience all the more enjoyable.  Take a look at the information below the slideshow to learn about Vatinet’s background.

 

 

 

Lionel Vatinet, Master Baker Extraordinaire

Vatinet joined France’s prestigious artisans’ guild Les Compagnons du Devoir as an apprentice at age 16 and 7 years later earned the title of Maitre Boulanger (Master Baker).  Since then, he has dedicated his life to sharing his knowledge, consulting nationwide and training bakers in Europe, the Middle East, Central and South America, Canada and the United States.  In 1995, Vatinet was the founding instructor at San Francisco Baking Institute, the first school of its kind in the US. 

In 1998, he fulfilled his lifelong dream and opened La Farm Bakery in Cary, NC.  La Farm Bakery is a modern bakery that continues the centuries-old baking traditions and techniques and honors the ordinary yet extraordinary boulangeries that once flourished in every little town in France. At La Farm Bakery, Vatinet produces 15 different styles of breads, and an additional 20 seasonal breads throughout the year using a European-style hearth oven. He’s best known for his signature “La Farm” sourdough bread – an impressive 5-pound boule with an intense flavor, similar to those still enjoyed on farms throughout France. 

Click here to learn more about Lionel Vatinet’s prestigious background.

Asheville Bread Baking Festival 2011

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Asheville Bread Baking Festival.  It was wonderful!  The event, held annually since 2004, began with local artisan bread bakers showcasing their breads at the Greenlife Grocery in downtown Asheville.

More than a dozen bakeries, from the Asheville area and Eastern Tennessee, offered samples of bread for sale. My boyfriend and I enjoyed sampling the breads.  All of the breads were great, but I must say we got “breaded out” if that’s possible. 

I hope to feature some of these bakeries in the near future. For now, I’ll just showcase their works of art.

A lot of the vendors were located outside the Greenlife Grocery so there were other items competing with the breads in these photos.  For example, the bike in the photo above and the top soil in the photo below.

As you can imagine, a lot of folks wanted to taste and buy bread.  I was just about to take a photo of some focaccia when someone decided to get some bread from this bakery.  I don’t blame them.  It looked delicious!

Here is the focaccia without an arm reaching across.

This bakery had some delicious pastries. We sampled a Pineapple Danish. I wasn’t able to get a photo, but it was delicious!

 

Look at this gorgeous Miche from the Hillside Bakery.

More beautiful breads.

And even more.delicious breads to choose from.

 

 

Here is some beautiful sprouted wheat bread. The baker who makes this bread used to be a carpenter but now he and his wife bake bread.  I love it!

 

 

There were more vendors inside but it was kind of dark and there were too many people sampling the wonderful breads to be able to get very many photos, but I did capture a few.

This is a beautiful bread from Farm and Sparrow Bakery.  It’s made with heirloom wheat that they grow themselves.  Very cool!

Rising Creek Bakery, from Mount Morris, PA also attended the festival. I got so busy talking with them about their method of bread-baking that I forgot to take a photo.  I’ll be sharing more about their salt-rising bread soon.

This part of the festival was really fun.  We enjoyed viewing and tasting all of the great breads.  I definitely want to do this again. The bakers were so friendly and their breads were exquisite.

The next part of the Asheville Bread Baking Festival included workshops with bakers. I will highlight that experience in another post.

Happy Baking!

Cathy