Asheville Artisan Bread Bakers Festival

All overplayed puns aside, it doesn’t take yeast to get a rise out of a baker: It takes a groundbreaking recipe for no-knead bread.

Flour power: Nationally known bread master Jeffrey Hammelman will headline the festival.

Mark Bittman, who writes “The Minimalist” column for the New York Times’ dining section, last November ignited the bakehouse blogosphere with his publication of a recipe for no-knead bread baked in a Dutch oven. “The loaf … will blow your mind,” Bittman promised in his accompanying story, which modestly suggested the technique—pioneered by Sullivan Street Bakery owner Jim Lahey—would be the biggest boon to bakers since the introduction of the gas stove.

“Mr. Lahey’s method is striking on several levels,” Bittman enthused. “It requires no kneading. (Repeat: none.) It uses no special ingredients, equipment or techniques. It takes very little effort.”

As Bittman described the formula, the home baker only had to spend one minute mixing and 30 seconds shaping to produce “great crumb, lightness and incredible flavor.” (Tempting as it to imagine baking a toothsome loaf of soft, honeycombed bread while waiting for American Idol to return from commercial break, the results aren’t exactly instantaneous: The recipe calls for almost a full day of rising.)

But even before the first experimental loaves could emerge from Times readers’ ovens, breadheads were going gaga for the revolutionary recipe. Bittman’s story was the paper’s most e-mailed article on Nov. 8, beating out coverage of the Democrats’ stunning recapture of Congress the previous day.

A Flickr site set up to feature photos of no-knead loaves snapped by proud bakers soon featured more than 400 images. And on the Web’s most respected culinary sites, exclamation points were flying: “Yes! A fantastic recipe! Something to rave about!,” wrote dedicated Bittman detractor and blogger The Wednesday Chef. “Wow, wow, wow!” chirped Sam Breach, over at Becks & Posh. “It’s the best bread I ever made,” concluded The Unemployed Cook. For months, “Have you tried the bread yet?” was the standard opening conversational line among bakers.

No-knead bread wasn’t new to Steve Bardwell, owner of Wake Robin Farm Breads in Marshall and an organizer of the upcoming third annual Asheville Artisan Bread Bakers Festival. Rustic European-style breads are so soggy they resist even the most determined kneaders’ hands. Wet breads are always stirred and folded, producing the distinctive floppy shape and gaping holes in the crumb.

“The interesting thing was baking in a Dutch oven,” says Bardwell. “I thought that was brilliant.”

For his first rendition of Bittman’s recipe, Bardwell co-opted a Dutch oven his mother-in-law had used to make fried chicken.

“It’s so cool,” says Bardwell. “You bake it at a very high temperature, and the result is the same as a big deal oven with steam injection. It comes out spectacular. I made two loaves yesterday.”

Bardwell is leading a workshop on the method for the festival, which this year features nine workshops for amateur and professional bakers. Bardwell anticipates the 35 tickets for his class “Easy Artisan Bread in a Dutch Oven” will go quickly: Customers have been persistently asking him about the technique since Bittman’s story appeared. (Workshop tickets are free, but are issued only to those who have purchased a loaf of bread at the morning’s bread sale.)

Other scheduled workshops include a session on whole grain breads led by Peter Reinhart, author of Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor (Ten Speed Press, 2007), an introduction to bread science by Weaver Street Bakery baker Emily Buehler and overviews of French bread and brioche conducted by bread maestro Jeffrey Hamelman, head baker at King Arthur Flour and author of Bread (Wiley, 2004).

“That’s a big deal,” says Bardwell of Hamelman’s participation.

Planning for the event, which gets bigger every year, has nearly consumed Bardwell. A short conversation with him was interrupted by a deliveryman with sweet Vietnamese cinnamon in tow—“I ordered one pound of it for Jeffery Alexander’s workshop; I don’t know why he needs it for bagels,” Bardwell explains—and a phone call from a Arkansan intent on being among the festival’s some 1,000 attendees.

“People have booked plane tickets from Michigan, Oklahoma, New Jersey and Pennsylvania,” says Bardwell. “It’s wild.”

Sixteen local bakers will participate in the morning bread tasting and sale. According to Reinhart, Western North Carolina supports more artisan bakeries—defined as bakeries in which each loaf is granted individual attention, rather than “squeezed out of a machine,” as Bardwell puts it—than most states.

“The bakeries are all small, but truly artisan in the purest sense of the word,” Reinhart says in a press release issued by the festival.

Bardwell isn’t sure why this area is such fertile ground for artisan bakeries.

“There are just so many people here who appreciate bread,” he says. “It’s a unique and wonderful thing.”

Artisan Bread Bakers Festival

The festival, which takes place on Saturday, March 24, kicks off with a bread tasting and sale at Greenlife Grocery from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and is followed by a slate of afternoon workshops at three locations (see schedule below). For more information, call 683-2902.

Greenlife Grocery Community Center
1:30 p.m.: The Many Tastes of Whole Grain Bread, with Peter Reinhart—This tasting session will explore the flavors and nutritional benefits of whole-grain breads, and the challenges bakers confront in making them.
3 p.m.: Easy Artisan Bread in a Dutch Oven, with Steve Bardwell—Not so easy that a workshop couldn’t help. Bardwell will guide attendees through every step of this suddenly popular process.
4:30 p.m.: Sweet and Savory Pies, with Aimee Mostwill and Barbara Swell—Local baker Barbara Swell, author of The Lost Art of Piemaking, and Aimee Mostwill will demonstrate good old-fashioned pie-making techniques.

A-B Tech Baking Kitchen
Noon: Classic French Brioche, with Jeffrey Hamelman—In a session intended for serious home bakers, the much-revered author of Bread will demonstrate different products and discuss their suitability for a fine brioche.
2 p.m.: Classic French Bread, with Jeffrey Hamelman—A baguette is long and lean, but other regions of France favor other shapes for their daily breads. Hamelman will demonstrate those styles in this overview session.
4:30 p.m.: Bagels and Bialys in the Old Tradition, with Jeffery Alexander—For at least an hour or so, it will be possible to get a good bialy in Asheville. Alexander, an instructor at Johnson & Wales University—will review the shaping, boiling and baking of these Old World treats.

A-B Tech Restaurant Kitchen

Noon: Desem Breads, with Jen Lapidus—Desem is a sort of bread starter. Local baker Lapidus, who’s earned nationwide acclaim for her full-flavored hearth breads, will explain the rest at this workshop.
2 p.m.: Naturally Leavened Croissant and Pastry, with David Bauer—Look ma, no yeast! Bauer will cover the basics of fermentation, laminating and maintaining a healthy leaven without baker’s yeast.
4 p.m.: The Science of Bread, with Emily Buehler—Dr. Buehler, author of Bread Science: The Chemistry and Craft of Making Bread, will explain why your bread is always perfect—and why sometimes it isn’t.