Class: This class will guide participants on an exploration of the flavor and function of two key baking ingredients– chocolate + (stone-ground) flour. Co-led by Dan Rattigan of French Broad Chocolate, and pastry chef, Jessica Spivey of Oyster Club and Port of Call in Mystic, CT, Dan and Jess will speak to the various characteristics of these ingredients as well as to the pairing of a selection of single origin chocolates with a selection of flavor-forward flours, specifically in shortbread application. This workshop will engage the senses, as there will be samples to taste for flavor and texture. Dan will also weave into the narrative the story of French Broad Chocolate, and what it means to be a B-Corporation. 

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 2:30 - 4:00 pm // French Broad Chocolate Factory, 821 Riverside Dr, #199, Asheville, NC 28801

Instructor(s): Dan Rattigan co-founded French Broad Chocolate with his wife, Jael Skeffington. Their passion for chocolate was ignited during a trip to the cacao-rich tropics of Costa Rica in 2003 when they drove a veggie oil-powered bus and opened a restaurant named Bread & Chocolate. In 2006, they relocated to Asheville to establish French Broad Chocolate, which has since expanded to include the Chocolate Lounge, a much-loved dessert destination in the heart of downtown, and the Chocolate Factory & Cafe. At the factory, they directly source cacao and expertly transform it into premium chocolate.
Jessica Spivey is the pastry chef at Oyster Club and Port of Call in Mystic, CT. Working alongside the James Beard Award nominated chef, Renee Touponce, she creates desserts with a focus on local and seasonal ingredients. Her culinary awakening began by cooking alongside her mother first in Florida, then later in France. She is deeply influenced by the desserts she ate growing up and by the European food markets her family visited weekly. She endeavors to pay homage to her upbringing and flavors of her youth by using sustainable New England ingredients from local farms.

Class: Ecology is the study of the relationship between organisms and their environment. Humans in modern western cultures often consider themselves to be removed from nature, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only heightened our fear of "germs"; but sourdough presents an opportunity to more fully appreciate and reconnect with microbes as our long-time partners. In this talk, Dr. Erin McKenney will draw from years of citizen science research and new data produced in partnership with Josh Bellamy at Boulted Bread to map the ecology of a sourdough starter and provide deeper context and understanding of fermentation and flavor.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 2:30 - 4:00 pm // White Labs (Culture Room), 172 S Charlotte St, Asheville, NC 28801 

Instructor: Dr Erin McKenney is the Director of Undergraduate Programs in Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University. Beyond the classroom, Erin studies how microbial communities form over time and how they adapt to their environments. For over a decade she has analyzed fecal samples from hundreds of animals in zoos and the wild, to learn how gut microbes affect health – and how humans can leverage or upset that balance. More recently, Erin has expanded her research to sourdough and other fermented foods that can be studied without laboratory equipment, using citizen science research to empower students of all ages and all over the world.

Class: Learn how to apply the leavening power of a natural sweet sourdough starter to leaven heavily enriched, high extraction doughs like whole grain brioche, cinnamon rolls, and doughnuts. We’ll break down the important steps in the mixing process of an enriched dough made with high extraction/whole grain flour as well as discuss the importance of a sweet sourdough starter in these specific dough systems. We’ll exhibit the visuals at which your sweet starter is ready to bake with and answer any questions regarding its application. In the end, we’ll bake, fry, decorate, and enjoy! Takeaways will include formulas for the aforementioned items as well as samples of everything made in class. 

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 2:30 - 4:00 pm // Carolina Ground (Kitchen), 1237 Shipp St. Hendersonville, NC 28791

Instructor: Grace Garay (She/Her)

I’m the founder and head baker of Nomad Bakehouse, a Cottage Law bakery in Orlando, FL. In late 2018, after over a decade in the hospitality industry working in everything from bakeries, to restaurants, hotels and resorts both in BOH and FOH I settled in Orlando in the hopes of turning what had been merely a vision for years into reality. Nomad began at the start of 2020 and at the cusp of the Covid-19 pandemic; as supply chains faltered I began to get many requests for bread. What started out as a few hand-mixed loaves a week has turned into hundreds alongside thoughtfully crafted sourdough pastries using solely stone milled flours from Carolina Ground. CG played a vital role in altering my relationship to flour and ingredients. To this day their stone milled grains are the strong foundation on which I build a seasonally rotating menu as we slowly introduce a staple that is largely missing from the Orlando food community. In the summer of 2011 I graduated with an AA in Baking and Pastry Arts from St.Philip’s College in San Antonio, TX before graduating from The French Pastry School in Chicago, IL in 2014. I was born in Miami, FL and raised between Honduras and the U.S; moving often. I am first generation Honduran and Puerto Rican and currently live where I produce in Delaney Park, Orlando.

Class: This class will be co-taught by Jennifer Lapidus and Amy Halloran, and will offer participants the full picture— from seed to loaf. The how and the why of the revival of small scale regional milling. Why do these mills matter? What role do regional mills play in the diversification of our grains? And flavor? And texture? This class will be rich with story and will also engage the senses (including taste, of course)!

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 2:30 - 4:00 pm // Carolina Ground (Mill Room), 1237 Shipp St. Hendersonville, NC 28791 

Instructors: Jennifer Lapidus (she/her) is the founder of Carolina Ground, a regional flour mill located in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Launched in 2012, Carolina Ground provides a niche market for large-scale organic Southern growers, while reducing the food miles of Southern bakers’ key ingredient. From 1994–2008, Jennifer was owner, operator, and baker of Natural Bridge Bakery, one of the first wood-fired brick oven bakeries in Western North Carolina producing whole grain naturally leavened breads. Jennifer is author of Southern Ground: Reclaiming Flavor Through Stone-Milled Flour published in 2021 by Ten Speed Press.
Amy Halloran lives in upstate New York. Her love for food, and for the people who grow and make it, led her to write a book about the revival of regional grain production, The New Bread Basket. She's worked in emergency feeding programs, and believes that food insecurity and regional grain systems share a core American problem: of our not valuing the work of feeding each other. Amy is working on a book about history: her own, her city's, and that of bread baking in America.

Class: This in-depth workshop is for new bakers and the bread-curious. We'll cover how to build and maintain a sourdough starter, with a focus on the science behind your starter and a flexible approach that will allow your sourdough's schedule to fit comfortably into your routine. Jackie will also demonstrate how to make a basic loaf of sourdough bread, from start to finish. The class will include a q&a portion at the end, where we'll attempt to troubleshoot all of your burning sourdough questions! Participants that wish to can take home an active sourdough starter, as well as a recipe document that covers starter maintenance and making a loaf of sourdough bread.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 2:30 - 4:00 pm // UNCA

Instructor: Jackie Vitale is a baker and food maker from Stuart, Florida. She runs Otto's Bread Club, a subscription sourdough bread bakery. Jackie has built an adventuresome career around her passion for feeding people. Highlights include spending a year on Captiva Island as the chef-in-residence at the Rauschenberg Residency, co-founding and running the kitchen at Ground Floor Farm, an urban farm and restaurant in her hometown, and making award-winning raw milk cheese at Kappacasein, an urban dairy in central London. Jackie enjoys reading novels, throwing pots, and snuggling her sweet old dog.

Class: In this class we will discuss and demonstrate how you can add bagel making to your baking repertoire in a way that works best for your lifestyle and baking experience. Bagels are a very idiosyncratic food and everyone wants the bagels they grew up eating. We'll be exploring the different styles of bagel production so students can feel more confident adding their own touch to this iconic baked good. The class will consist of a lecture, discussion, demonstration and hands-on elements.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 2:30PM - 4:00 pm // KBR Warehouse, 14 O’Henry Ave, Suite 110, Asheville, NC 28801

Instructor: Biking across the United States, Xander had trouble finding decent baked goods to fuel up on. Whenever he had access to an oven, he would buy a bag of flour, sugar, a dozen eggs, and scrounge up the rest of the kitchen staples he needed to embark on an all-night bake-a-thon. The next morning he’d leave with his bicycle piled high with goodies. By the time he got to Montana, Xander was getting nostalgic for a New Jersey childhood classic, the bagel, and began his journey into bagel making. 

Upon returning home, Xander established Home Free Bagels, a wholesale and retail pop-up bagel company that focused on employing unhoused individuals and getting them into more stable housing. While Home Free Bagels is no longer, Xander has kept himself busy by working in chocolate factories, farm stands, bread and pastry production kitchens, and cultivating and neglecting sourdough starters. 

Currently, Xander serves as a member of the baker's hotline for King Arthur Baking Company and operates his micro-bakery, Hawthorne House Bakery, out of his home for farmers' markets. When not baking or biking, Xander enjoys contra dancing, playing chess, and spending time with his son (and baker-in-training).

Class: In this 90 minute class, we will explore the use of freshly stone-milled flour and natural leavening to make pizza, which we will bake in a wood-fired oven.   We will discuss how fermentation, milling, and different types of ovens can intersect to enhance the flavor and texture of pizza made from fresh flour.   This class will also look at how we can use different flours and fermentation techniques to change our pizza crust with the seasons to better complement the toppings used throughout the year.   Finally, students will be able to troubleshoot their own pizza making in a collaborative group discussion.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 2:30 - 4:00 pm // Carolina Ground (3rd Space), 1237 Shipp St. Hendersonville, NC 28791 

Instructor : David Bauer is a miller, baker, seed collector and the founder of Farm and Sparrow in Mars Hill, NC. F&S is a mill that works with family farmers to grow organic landrace grains, which are carefully milled and sold fresh..  F&S began in 2006 as a wood-fired bakery that milled all of its own flour daily and baked breads fermented with the natural leaven.  In the following years, Bauer began growing out ancient seed varieties and built a sprawling community of small organic farmers to grow the grains for his bread and pastries.  In 2017, after 13 years of baking, Bauer closed the bakery and transitioned F&S into a commercial milling operation and now supplies chefs and bakers with freshly milled landrace grains all over the Southeastern US.   He is a proponent of seasonal milling.

Class: Millstone dressing, or the sharpening of millstones, is an art unto itself with various theories among millwrights as to the best way to cut and sharpen millstones. In this workshop, Andrew Heyn of New American Stone Mills and Tass Jansen of Jansen Grist Mills will join forces to lead a millstone dressing workshop. The workshop will take place at Carolina Ground, where the focal point will be Carolina Ground’s 48-inch diameter New American Stone Mill. Participants will learn the basic anatomy of a millstone: the bedstone, runner, furrows, lands…; will gain an introduction to the use of pneumatic stone carving tools; and will have hands-on practice dressing stones, under the guidance of Andrew and Tass.

Participants are to bring safety goggles to this class.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 12:30 - 4:00 pm // Carolina Ground (Dock), 1237 Shipp St, Hendersonville, NC

NOTE: This workshop will span two time slots, though you are not required to stay for the duration.

Instructor(s): Andrew Heyn owns Elmore Mountain Bread with his wife, Blair Marvin in Northern Vermont.  They bake wood-fired breads using stone ground local grain.  Andrew designed and built his own mill for their bakery, and in 2015 started New American Stone Mills to provide bakers with natural granite stone mills. Now he has built over 175 mills around the world for bakers, millers and farmers. 

Tass Jansen has been designing and building stone mills with his father, Roger Jansen and brother Larry, for over 30 years. Roger learned stone cutting and dressing while working for Meadows Mills in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. He was inspired to work at Meadows after he experienced the taste and smell of freshly stone-ground flour at a food co-op in Vermont. (This was after reading Henry Miller’s “Treatise on Bread.”) He then began Jansen Gristmills with his two sons, determined to not only revive the craft of stone milling but also teach the skills to dress one’s stones. Roger and Tass built the mills for Natural Bridge Bakery (1994-2008), and those mills were foundational to both Carolina Ground and Farm and Sparrow. Tass has maintained Carolina Ground’s mills since its inception.

Class: While many gluten free breads require stabilizers or starches to hold together, not all require them. Brennan Johnson will demonstrate how to make a buckwheat and oat based bread styled after a Danish Rye, with as much seeds and nuts as flour. Naturally leavened with a buckwheat starter, this bread goes through a slow fermentation to unlock both flavor and nutrition.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 12:30 - 2 pm // Carolina Ground (3rd Space), 1237 Shipp St. Hendersonville, NC 28791 

Instructor: Brennan developed a deep interest in food culture and history during a trip to Western Europe in 2009 to study communal brick ovens. Shortly after, he started baking bread in his father's brick oven and selling it at local farmers markets during his high school summers. He holds a degree in Environmental Humanities from Whitman College, where he explored our relationship with food, as well as an herbalism certificate from Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine. Brennan has worked in various restaurants and bakeries in San Francisco, Portland, Asheville, Minneapolis, and Europe.

The Wandering Schoolhouse is Brennan's way of integrating his diverse experiences and combining his fascination with food studies and hands-on cooking. He spends most of his time on the road, exploring foodways wherever he goes.

Class: Learn to make delicious items using only a griddle. We’ll use sourdough starter and sprouted wheat to create flavorful, nutritious options for brunch or dinner any day of the week. In the spirit of sustainability, all items will be vegan.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 12:30 - 2:00 pm // French Broad Chocolate Factory, 821 Riverside Dr, #199, Asheville, NC 28801

Instructor: Jon McDonald manages the bread operation for Weaver Street Market, a worker-owned co-op grocery store in Hillsborough, NC. He also teaches bread classes at John C. Campbell Folk School. He considers baking a community service, and his favorite breads involve anything with whole grains and sourdough.

Class: In this 90 minute workshop Tara will walk step by step through the process of making and baking the Ploughman 2.0, a naturally leavened loaf that features 100% freshly milled flour from her book Flour Power. Along with discussing the benefits of baking with freshly milled, regional flour, she will cover the tools she prefers to bake with, desired dough temperature and how to read a bread formula. Participants will have a chance to see the dough in all its stages and taste the results.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 12:30 - 2:00 pm // Carolina Ground (Kitchen) 1237 Shipp St. Hendersonville, NC 

Instructor: Tara Jensen is a baker, author, and teacher. Her mission is to inspire self-confidence within individuals and communities through the craft of baking. After owning and running a farmer's market based, wood fired bakery in Marshall, North Carolina, she became a baking instructor. Her focus areas include freshly milled flour and wood fired ovens. She has been teaching for over 7 years and her newest book, Flour Power, was named one of Washington Posts top ten cookbooks of 2022.

Class: From conception to the final plate. Join pastry chef, Jessica Spivey, for a hands-on class dedicated to using sourdough in desserts. Participants will witness and be a part of bringing all of the components for three different desserts to life. Jessica will share her thought process for creating desserts and all will have a chance to taste the final results. 

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 12:30 - 2:00 pm // UNCA 

Instructor: Jessica Spivey is the pastry chef at Oyster Club and Port of Call in Mystic, CT. Working alongside the James Beard Award nominated chef, Renee Touponce, she creates desserts with a focus on local and seasonal ingredients. Her culinary awakening began by cooking alongside her mother first in Florida, then later in France. She is deeply influenced by the desserts she ate growing up and by the European food markets her family visited weekly. She endeavors to pay homage to her upbringing and flavors of her youth by using sustainable New England ingredients from local farms.

Class: Come delve into all things stone-ground and naturally leavened. In this class, Blair Marvin will guide us through the process of producing naturally-leavened (aka sourdough) breads made with regionally-grown, stone-milled flour.  Stone-milled flour  provides a whole new palette of flavor to one’s baking, and to underscore this point, Blair will be working with 3 different flours– Appalachian White, NuEast, and Turkey Red– to demonstrate the incredible wealth of flavor one is able to access with stone-ground, variety specific flours. Blair will address the various characteristics to note about working with regional and stone-miled–that engaging with ingredients close to home may demand more of us as bakers, but that this will invariably make us better bakers and the resulting flavor is well worth it.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 12:30 - 2:00 pm // East Fork Pottery, 531 Short McDowell St, Asheville, NC 28803

Instructor: Blair Marvin is co-owner of Elmore Mountain Bread and New American Stone Mills with her husband, Andrew Heyn, in Elmore, Vermont. After pursuing a culinary degree and working in restaurants on both coasts, Blair has spent the past 15 years baking wood-fired sourdough breads. All of the bakery’s flour is milled on-site using regionally-sourced, farm-direct, organic wheat and specialty grains.  She is a vocal advocate for the development of relationships between farmers and bakers as a means to strengthen food systems and local grain economies. She is also a partner in Fire Tower Pizza, a small pizza shop and community project that uses her fresh milled flour and Vermont ingredients. 

Class: Join Karen Bornarth, executive director of the Bread Bakers Guild of America, for a workshop on how to improve your business performance and employee experience simultaneously by combining an investment in people with operational choices that raise the productivity, contribution and motivation of employees.  We will explore 4 operational choices—focus and simplify; standardize and empower; cross-train; and operate with slack—that have been proven to lower employee turnover and increase profitability.  You will come away from this workshop with concrete ideas and tactics for your own operation and an understanding of why good jobs make good business sense.

Who is this session for?  Business owners and operators working in food who manage teams

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 12:30 - 2:00 pm // KBR Warehouse, 14 O’Henry Ave, Suite 110, Asheville

Instructor: Karen Bornarth is Executive Director of the Bread Bakers Guild of America, a nonprofit membership association dedicated to supporting the sustainable growth of the artisan baking industry through education, training and community.  The Guild’s 2000+ members are bakery owners, professional bakers, ingredient and equipment suppliers, educators and others dedicated to the production of the highest-quality baked goods and to advancing the baking industry.

Through her years of experience as a bread baker and educator in New York City’s culinary landscape, Karen brings a passion for education and advocacy for frontline food production workers. She is particularly interested in breaking down the systemic and structural barriers to career and economic advancement for people of color and women in the culinary industry.

In her current work with the Bread Bakers Guild of America, she supports bakery owners and professional bakers to achieve success in their baking practices and businesses through classes and events in baking techniques and the business of baking, and opportunities to connect with and learn from their peers.

During her 7+ years with Hot Bread Kitchen, a nonprofit workforce and small business development agency in NYC, she developed an initiative to improve job quality and business performance in small food businesses, and oversaw a team to design and deliver a dynamic workforce development program in New York City.

She launched her career at Amy’s Bread as an overnight production baker, taught bread baking for several years at the French Culinary Institute, and developed products and processes for Le Pain Quotidien, an international franchise of bakery-cafes.

Class: Glenn Roberts, one of the leading purveyors of heritage and landrace grains, will share his wealth of knowledge of the history and context of flavor. Glenn will speak of the significance of grain culture and how it relates to crops in rotation for both the soil and the southern larder.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 12:30 - 2:00 pm // White Labs (Culture Room), 172 South Charlotte Street Asheville, NC, 28801

Instructor: Glenn Roberts founded Anson Mills in 1998 in Charleston, South Carolina, to rematriate lost foods of the 18th and 19th century Southern Pantry. Today Anson Mills grows and produces artisan organic landrace grain, legume, and oil seed ingredients for chefs and home cooks worldwide and provides culinary research support for pastry chefs, bakers, brewers, and distillers through Anson Mills Research Lab. Anson Mills provides pro bono seed biosecurity for the growing community of Southern organic place based identity preserved landrace crop farmers. Glenn is a recipient of the USA Artisan of the Year and National Pathfinder Awards and a founding member of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation.

Class: The Farmer/Miller/Baker coalition is a growing trend in the national and global bread community. Peter Reinhart, the founder and Executive Director of the Johnson & Wales International Symposium on Bread, as well as a long time Asheville Bread Festival speaker and supporter, will moderate an all-star panel with folks who are major participants in this dynamic coalition. We'll be discussing how the collaboration works, how farmers and agriculturists learn about, develop, and choose to plant new and ancient strains of wheat and other grains, and how millers and bakers then turn these rare and unique grains into delicious products that support sustainability and stewardship. You might even learn of some new grains that are on the horizon and how they traverse the journey from the earth to the table.

Panelists include: Peter Reinhart, moderator; Glenn Roberts (Anson Mills), farmer and miller; Jon McDonald (baker, Weaver Street Bakery), and Douglas Rose (co-owner and baker, Team Rose Breads).

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 10:30 am - 12:00 pm // White Labs (Culture Room), 172 South Charlotte Street Asheville, NC, 28801

Instructor: Peter Reinhart has been a baking instructor at Johnson & Wales University for the past 23 years, as well as for five years at the California Culinary Academy in SF. He is the author of 13 books on bread and pizza and is the host of the video website and podcast, Pizza Quest. He founded the International Symposium on Bread in 2017, presenting it four times during that span, both as live seminar gatherings, hands-on workshops, and a five-months long virtual "Zoom" event featuring presentations by dozens of the foremost thought leaders in the world of bread.  

Glenn Roberts founded Anson Mills in 1998 in Charleston, South Carolina, to rematriate lost foods of the 18th and 19th century Southern Pantry. Today Anson Mills grows and produces artisan organic landrace grain, legume, and oil seed ingredients for chefs and home cooks worldwide and provides culinary research support for pastry chefs, bakers, brewers, and distillers through Anson Mills Research Lab. Anson Mills provides pro bono seed biosecurity for the growing community of Southern organic place based identity preserved landrace crop farmers. Glenn is a recipient of the USA Artisan of the Year and National Pathfinder Awards and a founding member of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation.   

Jon McDonald manages the bread operation for Weaver Street Market, a worker-owned co-op grocery store in Hillsborough, NC. He also teaches bread classes at John C. Campbell Folk School. He considers baking a community service, and his favorite breads involve anything with whole grains and sourdough.

Doug Rose, his wife Kaitlin and their four children live in Charlotte, NC where they launched Team Rose Bread in their carport turned bread shop in September 2020 - a family business birthed in the pandemic. Everything baked at Team Rose Bread is 100% naturally leavened, made with locally milled flour and inspired by the foods they love to eat, Doug’s childhood in NYC and foodways shaped by heirloom and ancient grains. Doug and Kait are self taught bakers indebted to the countless other bakers and millers who have been a part of their bread making story.

Class: Baking, whether at home or in a professional kitchen, is a craft grounded in physicality. A baker uses their whole body to listen to their material, to converse with it, and to achieve desired qualities in their product. After thousands of hours on the bench, Susannah has combined her understanding of baking technique with her studies in dance, and has identified several core concepts that contribute to efficient movement and effective body mechanics that have helped achieve production results that have gained OWL Bakery wide recognition. This class will present posture and body mechanics as they pertain to bench work, including rolling and kneading, and discuss fundamentals of establishing healthy practices to avoid injury and maintain energy. 

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 10:30 am - 12:00 pm // East Fork Pottery, 531 Short McDowell St, Asheville, NC 28803

Instructor: Susannah Gebhart, a James Beard nominated baker, founded OWL Bakery in 2014, baking sourdough bread and hand-laminated pastries in a wood fired oven. OWL Bakery now has two storefronts in Asheville, NC, and Susannah is a proud member of a team that are leaders in their craft.

Class: Demo and hands-on class preparing yeasted and un-yeasted laminated rye doughs with sweet and savory fillings. Abruzzi rye flour adds vigorous flavor nuances when incorporated in any Viennoiserie product, especially buttery breakfast, or lunch products. This class will reveal the delicate texture of tarts, tartelettes, savories, and other breakfast and lunch items.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 10:30 am - 12:00 pm // UNCA 

Instructor: Harry Peemoeller is a certified German master baker and a senior instructor at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, specializing in baking northern European breads with rye flours. Born in Todendorf, Germany, a small town outside of Hamburg, at age 10 he began working in his stepfather’s commercial and retail bakery. He stayed at his craft, achieving master baker status at age 22. Peemoeller came to the U.S. in 1989 working at the commercial bakery supplier for Disney World in Orlando, and then his own Miami bakery. He has since directed bread production at a number of bakeries in both the United States and Germany. He was one of three bakers representing Team USA in the prestigious 2012 Paris Coupe du Monde, the World Cup of Baking, winning the silver medal in the Artistic Design Category. Peemoeller is currently coach for Team USA in the 2016 Coupe du Monde, returning to Paris in February 2016.

Class: Different microbes have different effects on bread aromas and flavor; but how can we tell which microbes live in our own starters without sequencing them? In this workshop, Dr. Erin McKenney will share tools and results from citizen science research on sourdough starters from Raleigh and around the world, to help you describe how your starter smells and predict which microbes produced those aromas, taking into account the flour you use, your starter's age, and other factors (in addition to smell). Erin will bring her own starter and a starter from Raleigh's Boulted Bread to compare; feel free to bring your own starter as well! 

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 10:30 am - 12 pm // White Labs lab room 172 S Charlotte St. Asheville, NC 28801

Instructor: Dr Erin McKenney is the Director of Undergraduate Programs in Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University. Beyond the classroom, Erin studies how microbial communities form over time and how they adapt to their environments. For over a decade she has analyzed fecal samples from hundreds of animals in zoos and the wild, to learn how gut microbes affect health – and how humans can leverage or upset that balance. More recently, Erin has expanded her research to sourdough and other fermented foods that can be studied without laboratory equipment, using citizen science research to empower students of all ages and all over the world.

Class: An integral part of the concept at La Bodega by Cúrate, the bread program guides a significant portion of the menu. Lead baker Josh Young focuses on Spanish-style laminated pastry, naturally leavened sourdough and baguettes that serve as the perfect vehicle for any bocadillo. While neighboring France gets the lion share of the credit for this type of bread, Spanish pastries have a style all their own. Josh incorporates a housemade spreadable chorizo sausage - called sobrasada - into the flaky layers. Instead of baking the xuixo (pronounced "choo cho"), it's deep fried then filled with pastry cream. Learn the basics of laminated pastry, how the Cúrate whole hog program intersects with the La Bodega bread program, and how everyday Spanish culinary traditions shaped the La Bodega concept. 

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 10:30 am - 12:00 pm // KBR Warehouse, 14 O’Henry Ave, Suite 110, Asheville

Instructor: Josh Young is the lead baker at La Bodega in Asheville, NC. A gifted baker, Josh has worked at various bakeries in Western NC, including Fletcher Village Bakery.

Class: One of the best ways to improve a well-fermented loaf of bread is by slathering a fresh slice of it with well-fermented butter. Learn to culture cream and turn it into exceptional butter, using simple ingredients and basic tools you likely already have in your kitchen. We'll also learn to make yogurt, which you'll use to culture the cream.  Being able to produce delicious homemade versions of these two staples will pay major dividends in your kitchen. Participants will leave with their own heirloom yogurt starter.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 10:30 am - 12:00 pm // French Broad Chocolate, 821 Riverside Dr, Asheville, NC 28801 

Instructor: Jackie Vitale is a baker and food maker from Stuart, Florida. She runs Otto's Bread Club, a subscription sourdough bread bakery. Jackie has built an adventuresome career around her passion for feeding people. Highlights include spending a year on Captiva Island as the chef-in-residence at the Rauschenberg Residency, co-founding and running the kitchen at Ground Floor Farm, an urban farm and restaurant in her hometown, and making award-winning raw milk cheese at Kappacasein, an urban dairy in central London. Jackie enjoys reading novels, throwing pots, and snuggling her sweet old dog.

Class: Want to spruce up your pastry skills utilizing the magic of sourdough fermentation and baking with stone ground, regional flour? Join Betsy Gonzalez of Osono Bread (an award-winning microbakery in Atlanta, GA) for the Introduction to Sourdough Pastry workshop! This introductory course is taught through a combination of demonstrations and brief hands-on elements to provide the basics of pairing sourdough techniques with pastry at home. 

Our baker will demonstrate on how to ferment pastry dough and batters, provide a lesson on sourdough starters and fermentation, and under the guidance of your teacher, students will bake and decorate seasonally-inspired, sourdough cakes, sourdough turnovers, and sourdough cookies in class. We rely on conservation-style lectures and demonstrations to provide the principles throughout this 90-minute workshop. 

Students will take away a jar of sourdough starter, pastry decorated and baked by you and your teacher, local stone ground flour to bake with, and a recipe guidebook to get you straight to baking. 

Topics covered:

• Starters: brief overview of creating and maintaining sourdough starters, discovering the potential of discard (leftover) starter for pastry 

• Slow fermentation: demystifying the various stages of fermentation and understanding how it can play a role in flavoring and enhancing pastry

• Regional, stone ground flours and seasonal, local ingredients: learning the role of flour in pastry-making, gaining a new perspective on flour, how to source regional grains, and baking with the seasons

• Sourdough pastry recipes: enhancing existing or developing your own pastry recipes with active or discarded sourdough starter, beginning with naturally fermented cakes, sourdough flaky dough, and sourdough cookie dough.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 10:30 am - 12 pm // Carolina Ground (3rd Space), 1237 Shipp St. Hendersonville, NC 28791

Instructor: After cultivating a baking career both regionally and abroad, Betsy Gonzalez established Osono Bread in Atlanta, Georgia in late 2018. Their old-world approach to baking emphasizes an investment in regional millers, local farmers, and the nourishment of the community through the tangible form of bread. Over the years, Osono Bread has grown to provide naturally leavened bread and pastry at weekly farmers markets throughout Atlanta. 

Beyond a dedication to wholesome baking, Betsy strives to use their platform to share the beauty of creating community through food and the power of the people's labor behind it.

Class: Easy, sustainable, delicious. Join baker and author Martin Philip of the King Arthur Baking Company as he demonstrates a basic sourdough loaf. Bringing in the festival theme of sustainability, Philip will share a low-fuss, adaptable method for making great bread in the cracks of your day.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 10:30 am - 12:00 pm // Carolina Ground (Kitchen) 1237 Shipp St. Hendersonville, NC 28791

Instructor: Martin Philip is a baker and award-winning author. His book, Breaking Bread: A Baker’s Journey Home in 75 Recipes, was awarded the 2018 Vermont Book Award, the best cookbook of 2018 by the New York Book Industry Guild, and Grand Prize at the New England Book Festival. He is a MacDowell Fellow and a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory and has been with King Arthur Flour since 2006.

Class: This slice of bread life takes a look at America in the early 20th century, as the bread making process became more mechanized, and more baking began to occur in factories, rather than at home or in small retail shops. In 1910, more Americans made bread than bought it; by 1920, Americans made less bread than they bought. Through studying her local history of bread, Amy Halloran has developed an understanding of some of the experiences involved in this transition to larger scale bread production. 

This talk covers bread history in Amy’s hometown of Troy, New York though really it could apply to Anytown, USA. Stepping back a century helps illustrate what was happening in people’s kitchens and in the emerging baking industry, and understand how ingredients and ideas about this staple food have evolved.

When/where: Saturday, April 22nd // 10:30 am - 12 pm // Revolve Gallery, 821 Riverside Dr, #179, Asheville, NC 28801

Instructor : Amy Halloran lives in upstate New York. Her love for food, and for the people who grow and make it, led her to write a book about the revival of regional grain production, The New Bread Basket. She's worked in emergency feeding programs, and believes that food insecurity and regional grain systems share a core American problem: of our not valuing the work of feeding each other. Amy is working on a book about history: her own, her city's, and that of bread baking in America.