Mackensy Lunsford

mlunsford@citizen-times.com

The 10th Asheville Artisan Bread Bakers’ Festival begins Saturday. The event, which takes place between two locations — the Carolina Ground Mill and Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College — celebrates local farmers, millers and bakers.

This year’s event will feature five of the most respected bakers in the United States: Lionel Vatinet, Didier Rosada, Peter Reinhart, Dominique Homo and Harry Peemoeller, as well as at least 15 local artisan bakeries. But the local bread movement hasn’t always been as fruitful.

Chris Kobler, one of the first artisan bread bakers in Asheville, remembers a time when good bread wasn’t so easy to find in Asheville. Kobler opened Blue Moon Bakery where the City Bakery is now on Biltmore Avenue in 1991.

According to Kobler, the people of Asheville seemed ready for a downtown bakery. “They loved it,” he said. “Within two weeks, people were stopping me in the street and saying ‘Thank you.’”

Kobler’s “European breads,” as he called them at the time, were made in a Bongard bread oven, which came with its own engineer. “And thousands of parts, and the engineer lived with us while he made it,” said Kobler. “This guy was a madman. He was born in Poland, and his accent was hard to understand, and he was unbelievably strong.”

Now, said Kobler, there’s plenty of “very good” bread in Asheville.

A natural bridge

Jennifer Lapidus, general manager of Carolina Ground, L3C, agrees. Lapidus in 1994 launched the Natural Bridge Bakery in Tennessee and, after moving to Asheville, reopened the bakery locally in 1998.

“When I started my bakery here, Chris was the only one baking at the time, and I was milling in-house and doing wood-fired bread, and I had to just do hours and hours of bread tastings with my 3-year-old daughter at my side,” said Lapidus. “Asheville then was such a hippie food scene, and wheat bread wasn’t so much about flavor and sophistication.”

According to Lapidus, the handful of local bakers in the ’90s made up the “fringe and the freaks in the parking lot for farmers markets — there were four of us in the French Broad Food Co-Op.”

Things have changed over the years. Lapidus is devoted to work with Carolina Ground and its focus on Carolina-grown and milled grain. While local eateries and bakers are using the resulting local flour from the project, other regions across the Southeast are also going with the grain.

Even though flour from Carolina Ground is not local to New Orleans by normal standards, the radius for “local” is larger when it comes to grain, Lapidus said.

“Most of all of our flour and grain production has been in these Midwestern states, so even if you had your flour milled in North Carolina, (the grain) was often shipped from at least 1,000 miles away,” she said. “We’re definitely cutting the miles — there’s not many of us in the country, and Carolina Ground has been able to take that flag.”

Lapidus said Carolina Ground offers a “boutique experience,” providing single-origin flours on a level much more intimate than baking with a blended commodity product — even an organic product. “We’re a different type of mill, and part of pioneering this effort means that we’re able to mill to the needs of the bakers who want to work with us,” she said.

Lapidus said that being the miller rather than the baker has enabled her to grow in her perspective of “what bread is and not what bread should be.”

“There’s room at the table for a variety of breads... And the bread fest is the perfect place for people to explore what bread is,” she said.

Lapidus will help host a dinner to benefit Carolina Ground on Saturday after the first day of the Artisan Bread Baker’s Festival. Learn more about her efforts there. See “If You Go” on this page for details.

Beyond the bread snob

“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Jennifer Lapidus of Carolina Ground for the past two years now, and believe she’s had a real influence on Asheville’s bread scene,” said Lionel Vatinet, master baker at Cary’s La Farm Bakery. “We are so proud to finally be able to make our breads with her locally grown and milled flour at our bakery in Cary, NC.”

Vatinet, whose bakery is recognized by Saveur magazine as one of the 20 Great American Bread Bakeries, will be one of the featured bakers at Bread Fest. He’ll teach two classes, one for home bakers, and one for professionals.

“The ciabatta class for home bakers is ideal for anyone who wants to bake bread regularly but doesn’t want to worry about the technicalities of shaping,” he said. “Ciabatta and focaccias are also so versatile, and this class will teach about long fermentation and higher hydration.”

He’ll also teach a ‘country French’ bread-making class, which he said is great for home bakers who want to learn about fermentation and shaping techniques.

Vatinet joined the French artisans guild, Les Compangons du Devoir, at 16 and immediately fell in love with bread baking. “Bread for me is magical, nourishing and rewarding on so many levels,” he said. “Studying fermentation and bread baking is my life’s work.”

Vatinet’s current favorite bread is whole wheat made from 100 percent organic North Carolina flour. It’s also one of his best sellers. Sharing the collaboration between the miller and the wheat farmer is a powerful experience for both Vatinet and his customers, he said.

“As an industry, we are constantly educating and I think we’re finally beginning to see the perception of whole grain breads change,” Vatinet said. “Now customers know that with great technique and ingredients, whole grain breads are both delicious and healthy, and a critical part of a good diet.”

Vatinet said he believes that the appreciation for good bread now extends beyond the bread snob into the realm of the typical consumer — albeit the type who shops at Whole Foods. La Farm Bakery sells its products in the five Triangle-area locations of the grocery store chain, and sales indicate customers aren’t buying artisan breads for special occasions alone.

“They’re replacing grocery store bagged breads with real crusty artisan bread,” said Vatinet. “It’s an exciting time for bread in this country.”

It’s also an exciting time for leftover bread. Vatinet has shared his recipe for cocotte, sort of a breakfast bread pudding, Page D1.

COCOTTEFrom Lionel Vatinet’s “A Passion for Bread: Lessons from a Master Baker” (Little Brown & Co., 2013).You can use any style of bread or even a mixture of many different varieties to make a cocotte (casserole). Ours is a breakfast cocotte filled with spicy sausage, smoked ham, sautéed mushrooms, and shallots tossed with bread cubes in a delicious egg custard and then topped with breadcrumbs before baking. It is a good idea to freeze the ends of bread that don’t get used for that “rainy day” when a breakfast cocotte is just the thing to warm hearts and tummies. A cocotte is also terrific for easy entertaining, as it has to be made the night before it is to be served, allowing the host to spend very little time in the kitchen while the brunch gathering is going on. La Farm customers often buy our savory bread pudding and then reheat it to serve for an easy Sunday morning brunch along with sparkling mimosas.1 loaf La Farm Bread (or other bread), slightly stale, cut into 1-inch cubes1 baguette, slightly stale, cut into 1-inch cubes (about 2 pounds total)1 tablespoon canola oil1 pound pork breakfast sausage, crumbled8 ounces button mushrooms, quartered6 shallots or 1 medium onion, finely chopped4 garlic cloves, finely chopped1⁄4 cup dry white wine1⁄2 pound smoked ham, finely diced2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese1⁄2 cup grated Comte or Gruyere cheese12 large eggs, at room temperature3 cups heavy cream1 tablespoon fine sea salt1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepperLightly coat a 9-by-13-by-2-inch baking dish with nonstick vegetable spray.Combine the sourdough and baguette cubes in a large mixing bowl, tossing to blend well. Place half of the bread cubes in the prepared baking dish. Set aside.Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the sausage and fry, stirring frequently, until nicely browned, about 10 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the sausage crumbles to a double layer of paper towels to drain, leaving the fat in the pan.Keeping the pan on medium heat, add the mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently, for 4 minutes. Add the shallots and fry, stirring frequently, for 2 additional minutes. Stir in the garlic and fry for 1 additional minute.Add the wine and cook, stirring to deglaze the pan, for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and set aside.Sprinkle half of the ham over the bread cubes in the baking dish, followed by half of the sausage. Spoon half of the mushroom mixture over the sausage and then sprinkle with half of the mozzarella. Cover with the remaining bread cubes and then repeat the layering of ham, sausage, mushrooms, and mozzarella. Cover the top with the Comté cheese. Set aside.Combine the eggs and cream in a large mixing bowl, whisking to blend well. Season with salt and pepper and then pour over the top of the casserole. Cover the pan with foil.Transfer to the refrigerator and allow the bread to absorb the flavors and the liquid for at least 4 hours or up to 12 hours.Remove the cocotte from the refrigerator 1 hour before baking and set aside, still covered, to come to room temperature. It’s important to bring the casserole to room temperature before baking or the bottom will burn before it is cooked through.About 30 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.Place the casserole on a baking sheet in the preheated oven. (The sheet will catch any liquid that bubbles over the top.) Bake for 1 hour. Then, uncover and bake until golden brown and bubbling, about 15 minutes more.Remove from the oven and let rest for 10-15 minutes before cutting and serving.

IF YOU GOWhat: The 10th Asheville Artisan Bread Bakers’ Festival, a two-day event for enthusiasts and professional bakers to network, improve baking skills and share ideas.When: 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday. More than 15 local artisan bakeries offer samples and sell bread. Also find hands-on workshops and lectures by guest artisan bakers from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. On Sunday, a six-hour master class for professional bakers is planned. To learn more, contact wakerobinfarmbreads@main.nc.us.Where: Magnolia Hospitality Education Center on the Asheville campus of A-B Tech, off Victoria Road. One workshop Saturday will be at Carolina Ground Mill — a stone dressing demonstration by Roger and Tass Jansen of Jansen Gristmills. Tickets: Not needed to attend festival, but required for all workshops. Visit www.ashevillebreadfestival.com.

IF YOU GOWhat: Carolina Ground’s pig roast fundraising dinner to support Carolina Ground’s efforts toward local grain, local flour and local bread. The menu, by All Souls chef and co-owner Brendan Reusing, will include slow-roasted pork, pancetta and sausage, cowpeas, greens and other savory sides. The pig was raised on the wheat midds (a byproduct of milling) from Carolina Ground. This event is being held in conjunction with the bread festival.Where: All Souls Pizza, 175 Clingman Ave., Asheville.When: 6:30 p.m. Saturday. Tickets: $50, including one pour from a Riverbend Malthouse-featured beer. Available online at slowfoodasheville.org, All Souls Pizza, West End Bakery, West First Wood Fired in Hendersonville and Flat Rock Village Bakery.