Attendees of the 2007 Kneading Conference

History of the KNEADING Conference

The conference was the work of local non-profit groups and community members passionate about wood fired bread. The original idea was the brainchild of Albie Barden, co-owner of the Maine Wood Heat Company, Inc., an expert in masonry heaters and wood fired ovens, who had presented at several other bread conferences, but none on the East Coast, and none that focused on locally grown and milled grain, wood fired ovens and bread. Amber Lambke and Lisa Veilleux, both members of Main Street Skowhegan, a downtown revitalization group, were involved from the start, connecting the group to local resources and helping to make sure that the conference was hosted in downtown Skowhegan.

Along with the support of the Western Mountains Alliance, Tessa Burpee, of Heart of Maine Resource Conservation and Development, a non-profit organization working to improve social, economic and environmental conditions in Maine's rural counties, got involved early on in the planning, taking on the task of organizing the finances and participant registration.

Michael Scholz, owner of the Albion Bread Company, a wood fired bakery run out of his farmhouse in Albion, was the first to host a meeting about the conference idea. With his connections in the bread, milling and grain worlds, he helped to contact and convince presenters to be a part of the event.

Kendra Michaud, a Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) Farmer in Residence at the Fail Better Farm in Unity, who, with her partner Clayton, built a clay wood fired oven after reading Kiko Denzer's book Build Your Own Earth Oven. She sells bread baked in the oven with other farm products at a local farmer's market. Kendra helped to connect the group to MOFGA who helped to fund our first publication and helped with publicity and advertising. Kendra's connections also brought us baking presenters and Kiko Denzer.

Nina Pleasants, a community member, bread lover and real estate agent who recently retired to Maine from a teaching position at Boston University, helped the group raise much-needed funds by approaching local businesses for advertisements. Sarah Dorr and Sara McCabe were hired by the group early on in the process to help organize all of the details of the conference.

In all, this planning group put in an amazing amount of volunteer time to make the conference a reality.

Thursday August 2, 2007

On that hot August afternoon, ovens, presenters and participants made their way towards Skowhegan, Maine, a small city in Central Maine for the first annual KNEADING Conference.

The Conference location was on the island in the middle of the Kennebec River in downtown Skowhegan at the Federated Church grounds and the Benedict Arnold Park. Tony and Todd Grant's large, beautiful portable copper oven from Speerville Mill in New Brunswick, Canada (just over the border from Houlton, Maine) was the first to arrive at the conference site. Next, the Giroux Brothers'' striking stainless steel portable oven arrived from Marshfield Vermont. The workshop area was complete with the arrival of the Maine Wood Heat Company's portable copper-topped oven from Norridgewock, Maine.

Over the course of the conference, four more ovens would be built at the conference site (three clay ovens and a brick oven). Meanwhile on August 2nd, eight more wood fired ovens were in action at pre-conference workshops across Maine:

Kendra Michaud, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) Farmer in Residence at the Fail Better Farm in Unity hosted a workshop featuring the earthen oven she built last fall. Her workshop included a discussion about how her oven was built, and instruction on sourdough bread baking.
Albie Barden hosted a workshop on the history and construction of the wood fired ovens, which included a dry assembly of Le Panyol bake ovens at his home and base for his masonry heater and oven business the Maine Wood Heat Company in Norridgewock, Maine.
Michael Scholz hosted a workshop at his home-based bakery the Albion Bread Company, on operating a small wood fired bakery. His session included information on the process of grain from the field to the table, as well as instruction on the use of regionally grown wheat in hearty artisan breads. Doug Brown of the Oak Haven Bakery in Granville Ferry, Nova Scotia was a guest assistant in this workshop.
Jennifer and Steve Dionne hosted a workshop on baking bread using local Oak Pond Brewery beer in their wood fired oven at their home on the shore of Oak Pond in Skowhegan. Maryann Reynolds, owner of The Yellow Place bakery in Solon, Maine helped to lead the bread baking instruction.
Stu Silverstein, owner of the Grand Central Café, a wood fired pizza restaurant in Waterville, Maine, hosted a workshop on the history of bread baking with instruction on pizza, bialys, onion bread superieur, pitas and zaatar.
Harold "Dusty" Dowse led a workshop at his home in Cambridge, Maine on heat management of the wood fired oven and baking in multiple batches.
Michael Romanyshyn hosted a workshop at his Temple Stream Theater in Temple, Maine which featured building an oven with 400 bricks in a half an hour. Participants then baked breads in the oven after it was completed.
Michael Jubinski of the Stone Turtle Baking School in Lyman, Maine, taught a workshop on artisan breads with pre-ferments and heritage grain.

Friday, August 3, 2007

By 7:00am, the Conference site was alive with volunteers and presenters who were busily setting up for day ahead. The weather was already hot and sticky, but there was sense of anticipation and excitement as people began pouring in to register. A total of 105 people attended the two day event, including 35 volunteers and speakers and 70 registered participants. This included people from all over Maine, the U.S., Canada and even one person from France! A prize was given to the young man from France and the couple from Hawaii for traveling the furthest to get here.

The Conference kicked off with a welcome address from Albie Barden - the visionary behind the conference. We also heard from guest speaker Heather Spaulding, Associate Director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) who spoke about the history of grain production and organic farming in Maine. Pastries, fresh fruit, juices and coffee were donated by generous businesses from around Maine (please see a complete list of donators and sponsors at the end of this page).

The conference was broken down into half and full day workshops and hour long lectures. Morning lectures featured Jim Amaral, founder and owner of Borealis Bread, who discussed ways of bringing Maine grown wheat back into food production. Mark Fulford, a farmer, educator, and independent consultant in the field of soil and plant health, propagation, grafting, and plant nutrition, discussed seed trials and soil fertility for small grain production and recipes for strong straw and good grain in less than ideal climates. Will Bonsall, director of the Scatter Seed Project which is dedicated to collecting, growing and sharing the seed heritage of the Northern New England area, discussed the sustainable growing, cultivation, and harvesting of wheat and other small organic grains, in two hour-long discussions. He also showed participants how to use traditional tools throughout the whole process.

The first products fresh from the wood fired oven were from Doug Brown's workshop on whole wheat pastry. The speed at which the almond filled pastries were gobbled up by conference participants was a testament to the use of whole wheat to create delicious baked goods. Doug operates a wood fired bakery, Oak Haven Bakery in Granville Ferry, Nova Scotia. His organic products can be found in food stores across Atlantic Canada. Participants in his workshop learned about the creation of whole wheat pastry dough as well as techniques in pastry production. Doug had his participants get their hands in the dough to practice the ideas and techniques he spoke about.

Ciril Hitz, world famous bread sculptor and baking/pastry professor at Johnson and Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, led two full-day bread baking and bread sculpture workshops, which featured sourdoughs, foccacia, baguettes, artisan boule loaves, along with bread sculpture techniques and assembly, all of which were baked in the wood fired oven. Ciril's energetic, interactive teaching style made learning bread sculpture techniques a lot of fun.

Dusty Dowse, a wood fired oven baker from Cambridge, Maine, led a workshop on baking pizza in the wood fired oven. The participants in Dusty's workshop, as well as the event's caterer, Billi Barker, a baker and organic farmer from Firefly Farm in St. Albans, Maine, along with her staff, created pizza to feed the whole conference group for lunch.

Meanwhile, Kiko Denzer, earthen oven expert and author of Build Your Own Earth Oven, led a day-long workshop on building your own clay oven, from start to finish. Participants learned how to build a clay oven by first constructing a very small demonstration oven, which was completed and ready for a fire within the first several hours of the workshop. Participants also worked on a large oven, which was completed over the two-day workshop period and raffled off at the end of the conference. People in this group learned about the building materials first hand -and foot. Some of the best images from the conference are of Kiko's groups mixing clay with their feet, building the ovens with their hands and feeding the fire with their breath. With help from Kiko's assistants, Kendra Michaud and Stu Silverstein, Kiko was also able to lead short hour-long discussions each day of the conference for those interested in earthen ovens, but were unable to attend the full-day workshop.

After lunch, Pat Manley, who has been studying, designing and building wood burning masonry heaters and wood fired brick pizza and bread ovens since 1978, led a discussion on designing and building bake ovens. Pat has built the ovens at Café Miranda, Primo and Bricks in Rockland, Silver Lane Bistro in Warren, Fore Street in Portland, the Edge in Lincolnville, Black Crow in Litchfield, Matchbox in Washington DC, and a personal pizza oven for Billy Joel in his home in Long Island, NY. Pat also works on a project that he founded eight years ago called Masons on a Mission, a non-profit humanitarian project that organizes brick and stone masons and other interested parties to build vented masonry cook stoves to replace unhealthy, smoky and unvented open fires used for heat and cooking in the dwellings of thousands of Maya living high in the mountains of Guatemala. Pat gave a talk on Saturday afternoon about this program.

Tony Grant, of Speerville Mill in New Brunswick, Canada, whose goal is to foster their local community by providing high quality, healthy, organic local wheat and grain products to serve their unique bioregion of Atlantic Canada (of which Maine would be included in), discussed experiences Speerville Mill has had, from paying fair prices to growers, providing jobs for a small town, to restricting sales to their bio-region.

Richard Kersbergen, Extension Educator at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension specializing in dairy nutrition, organic dairy, forage and integrated farming systems, discussed local grains and the organic dairy community.

Educational Displays by Eli Rugosa of Canaan, Maine and Foods for Maine's Future, offered conference participants additional resources and information. Eli's display about heritage wheat was both beautiful and interesting. Food for Maine's Future offered a wealth of information on food independence.

Just as the workshops and lectures were wrapping up on that first day, a huge thunderstorm plowed through Skowhegan, encouraging us all inside, where stories of the day were shared and new discussions were sparked.

After an amazing meal produced with all local, fresh ingredients cooked in wood fired ovens (with the help of Cheryl Barden and Cate Conway), including chicken raised by local farmer Mike Vermette of Highland Farm, roasted potatoes, salad, and fresh Maine blueberry pie, the group gathered for the keynote speech by Steven Lanzalotta, Maine baker, artist and author. Steven's talk led us through the journey of his life and the meaning and magic he has found in bread baking. By explaining the origins of words associated with bread, he provided insight into our culture as a human civilization and our need for sustenance for our mind and body.

Saturday, August 4, 2007

While the thunderstorms raged overnight, they seemed to help push out some of the humidity and Saturday was much cooler and more pleasant. Morning lectures on Saturday included Matt Williams, owner of Aurora Mills, a small scale, Maine-grown wheat farm and milling operation in Linneus, Maine. Matt discussed milling Maine grown grains. Albie Barden led a two-hour discussion on the history of wood fired ovens. His teaching included the role of fire in the development of civilizations, as well as the design and stories of ovens throughout different cultures in history.

Michael Romanyshyn, a baker, musician, puppeteer and director of the Temple Stream Theater in Temple, Maine, shared his skill of oven building with dry brick stacking that he learned while performing with the Bread and Puppet Theater for over 20 years.

Jack Lazor was next to present. He is the co-owner with his wife Annie of Butterworks Farm, located in the mountains of Vermont's pristine and unspoiled Northeast Kingdom. The Lazors are unique among New England organic dairies and yogurt makers in that they have been farming organically for twenty-five years and are totally self-sufficient. Jack talked about heirloom grains, seed saving and corn and grain breeding.

After lunch, there was a panel discussion. The panel was made up of Jim Cook, director of Crown O' Maine Organic Cooperative, a major wholesale distributor of Maine grown winter staples, including grain, Matt Williams, Tony Grant, Jack Lazor and Lisa Harris from Northeast Organic Farming Association in Vermont. Lisa works to educate the public about purchasing local foods. The panel was moderated by Michael Scholz and discussed the challenges of field to table grain production in Maine.

Saturday workshops included Tim Gosnell, production manager at Standard Baking Company in Portland, Maine, who taught a workshop about whole wheat sourdough bread. Cheryl Barden and Cate Conway of the Maine Wood Heat Company led a workshop on cooking in the wood fired oven, from meats to vegetables and deserts. The amazing pork loin they created was devoured in seconds by conference participants!

Mark Mickalide, owner of the Black Crow Bakery, a wood fired bakery in Litchfield, Maine, led a workshop on Greek pastry in the wood fired oven. Dusty Dowse led another workshop on Saturday that focused on fuel and heat management of the wood fired oven and planning a cooking schedule. Ciril Hitz and Kiko Denzer led a second day of their workshops, as well.

At the end of the day on Saturday, participants boarded buses to enjoy a tour of the Oak Pond Brewery, a locally owned and operated brewery in Skowhegan. After samples of the delicious brew, participants headed across the street to beautiful Lake George Regional Park for swimming, a BBQ and live music from local artist Wally Warren. The meal of roast pork lion, locally raised by Luce's Meats, local corn on the cob from the oven and baked beans cooked overnight in the ovens was the perfect feast for a summer evening and a great way to wrap up the conference.

The most significant part of the KNEADING Conference was the feeling of empowerment, encouragement, cooperation and sharing. There are so many of us out there trying to live more meaningful lives by fostering our connection to the earth, whether through farming, small scale crop processing or cooking, baking and preserving. This coming together seemed to help people recharge their batteries and make new connections and friendships around these common goals.

We are very grateful to all who presented and participated in the conference, and look forward to continuing this relationship into the future. We are planning next year's conference for Friday August 1st and Saturday, August 2nd. Please contact kneading@heartofmaine.org if you have any questions, comments, or are interested in receiving information about this event.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

As most participants were making their journey home, a handful stayed for one more day of learning and sharing. These post-conference field sessions were hosted by:

Lisa and Jim Veilleux, a professional baker and chef team. Their workshop was held at their home on Oak Pond and focused on cooking to utilize the wood fired oven, with an emphasis on Central American food.
Kendra Michaud, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) Farmer in Residence at the Fail Better Farm in Unity. Kendra hosted a workshop featuring the earthen oven she built last fall. Her workshop included a discussion about how her oven was built and instruction on sourdough bread baking.