Local artisan bakers are gearing up for the seventh Asheville Artisan Bread Bakers Festival this Saturday, April 2. This two-part event begins with a bread tasting and sale at the Greenlife Grocery in downtown Asheville from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., followed by hands-on workshops and lectures from noon until 6 p.m.
The featured bakers at this year’s event are Didier Rosada from Uptown Bakers, near Washington, D.C., and Lionel Vatinet from La Farm Bakery in Cary, N.C. Rosada and Vatinet are both certified master bakers and have coached the gold-medal winning American teams in La Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, a world baking competition. Both have also been instructors at the San Fransisco Baking Institute and continue to be highly respected teachers, consultants and writers.
In addition to Rosada and Vatinet, the festival will feature presentations by Peter Reinhart, well-known author, baker and teacher at Johnson and Wales University, and Jennifer Lapidus, the director of the North Carolina Organic Bread Flour Project.
Jennifer Lapidus, director of the North Carolina Organic Bread Flour Project, will be in attendance at the bread festival.
Photo by Hazen Hunter photography
“Asheville and its surrounding area, with a very small population, supports more artisan bakeries than most states. The bakeries are all small but truly artisan in the purest sense of the word,” Reinhart says.
The Asheville Artisan Bread Festival has bell well-attended for the past six years. More than a dozen local artisan bakers will show, sample and sell their bread this year.
For bread enthusiasts who want to improve their baking skills, there are afternoon workshops and lectures at A-B Tech, taught by Rosada, Vatinet and Reinhart. Tickets are required for all the workshops. *Update: tickets to workshops are sold out.
The festival is sponsored by local bakeries, the Bread Bakers Guild of America, Greenlife Grocery, Slow Food Asheville, Lindley Mills (an organic flour mill in Graham, N.C.), the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project and the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association.
For more information contact Steve Bardwell at 683-2902 or wakerobinfarmbreads@main.nc.us. Visit the festival website for more information. http://www.ashevillebreadfestival.com.
Only three of the workshops are sold out (as of 4pm) — there are plenty of tickets for Peter Reinhart’s demonstration of sprouted grain flour bread.