Asheville Artisan Bread Festival 2010

Shalom Y’all,

I was blessed to attend the Asheville Artisan Bread Festival 2010. It is a wonderous yearly event highlighting local natural bakeries and farms who bring their best breads, jams, jellies and goat cheeses to sell.

Walking from table to table sampling the aromas and tastes, drinking in the beautifully-shaped loaves and the rustic free-forms that are truly artwork, a bread aficionado can literally spend hours in paradise.

On top of that, the world-famous /bakers/chefs/teachers/authors were on hand to give classes and demonstrations. To obtain a ticket to a class, one had to buy a loaf of bread from one of the bakeries (as if we had to be cajoled)and the difficult part was choosing from the hundreds of offerings!

As is my usual choice, I opted to attend Peter Reinhart, Master Baker / teacher and author in his class demonstrating recipes from his newest book; Artisan Breads Every Day. As usual, Chef Reinhart is warm, funny, and totally accessible in his demeanor. The best part was tasting the decadent and deliciously-rich Chocolate Cinnamon Babka warm from the oven. Oh my! That recipe alone is worth the price of the book!

I plan to re-create Peter Reinhart’s Artisian Breads Every Day recipes only using 100% whole grains. I believe the first one I will try is the….yes, you guessed it, the Babka!