Each summer since 2007, persons with a hungry curiosity about bread and baking have gathered in Skowhegan, Maine to learn more about building a brick oven, wood-fired baking, growing grains, and eating well. For bakers, farmers, homesteaders, and ambitious home cooks unsatisfied with factory-sliced bread the Kneading Conference is a place to share ideas and learn new skills. It is a gathering ground for "bread-heads" as Daniel Rivera, a young farmer from New York, put it on Twitter.
When the Somerset County Jail in downtown Skowhegan was built in 1897, one can be quite sure neither the guards or the inmates they watched over would have ever expected the lockup to be reused as a grist mill project reviving local grain production in central Maine, as well as having the reputation of being one of the country's emerging rural 'food hubs.' Yet, in 2009 thanks in great part to the efforts of Amber Lambke, now President of the Somerset Grist Mill, it became just that.
Over two days attendees have options such as touring the mill, building a brick oven from scratch with heralded mason J. Patrick Manley III of "Masons on a Mission," getting a bit of flour on their hands learning to bake bagels in a wood-fired oven with Master Baker Jeffrey Hamelman of King Arthur Flour, or learning about growing heirloom varieties of corn from Albie Barden, owner of Maine Wood Heat (a wood-burning oven company).
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