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Borealis Breads

enlarge Photos by Tim Greenway/Staff Photographer

Jim Amaral, owner of Borealis Bread, rounds dough made with flour from Maine-grown whole wheat at his bakery on Ocean Avenue in Portland. Amaral has worked with Maine wheat farmers for his breads for a decade and “is thrilled” about funding to help expand wheat growing here.

FREE BREAD FAIR AND TRADE SHOW FOLLOWS CONFERENCE

THE THIRD annual Kneading Conference will be held Thursday and Friday, and will be followed by a free trade show and local bread fair open to the public on Saturday.

A RECORD 180 people are expected to attend the $300-per-person conference this year, including chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, a pioneer of the farm-to-table restaurant movement who was named "Outstanding Chef" at this year's James Beard Awards.

KEYNOTE speakers will be Glenn Roberts from South Carolina-based Anson Mills, who will talk about heirloom grains, and Dan Wing, author of "The Bread Builders," who will talk about the new trend of mobile wood-fired ovens.

THIS YEAR for the first time, the conference has added a free day for the public, so people can see bread coming out of wood-fired ovens, buy breads and baking tools, and purchase foods that go well with bread, such as local jams and cheeses.

THE TRADE SHOW and bread fair will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the same place as the conference, at Tewksbury Hall just behind the Federated Church on Island Avenue in Skowhegan. For complete directions, go to www.heartofmaine.org/kneading.

When artisanal bakers and farmers get together this weekend at the third annual Kneading Conference in Skowhegan, they'll have lots to talk about – and celebrate.

For years, Maine bakers have bemoaned the lack of locally-grown wheat that could help them create fresher, better-tasting bread products.

Now the issue is finally taking a giant leap forward with a new $1.3 million federal grant that will be used to develop organic wheat farming in Maine and Vermont.

The grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture will fund a four-year project that brings together scientists, farmers, bakers and millers from both states to expand organic wheat production in New England, once a bread basket of the nation.

Ellen Mallory, a sustainable agriculture specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Service who is leading the project, estimates that Maine produces 200 to 500 acres of organic wheat. Vermont produces about the same.

"It's hard to get a handle on what the demand really is, but we know that we're well below supplying that demand," Mallory said.

"People have thrown out the figure that it would take at least 3,000 acres of production to supply just the current demand in Maine alone, but it's not based on any market analysis. Mostly, it's based on talking to bakers who can't find enough (local bread wheat), and talking to the distributors who have a lot of customers who are asking for it, but it's just not there," she said.

The grant will be used to test which varieties of wheat work best in different regions of Maine and Vermont, and to retrain farmers in the lost art and science of growing bread wheat in New England.

The project will begin this fall with the planting of winter wheat varieties at the university's experiment station and on local farms.

The project is likely to be a hot topic at this weekend's Kneading Conference, a gathering of professional and home bakers, chefs, farmers, millers and bread-oven builders who come together each year to learn about the trade and participate in hands-on demonstrations.

"I would say the interest is quite high," said Amber Lambke of Skowhegan, chairwoman of the planning committee for the Kneading Conference, which is hosted by the Heart of Maine Resource Conservation and Development Area. "We had over 50 attendees at a grain-growing workshop we hosted earlier in the spring in Bangor. That's huge, to get 50 farmers in a room together."

Some of the renewed interest in growing wheat comes from organic dairy farmers, who have been suffering during the recession and already have some of the equipment that's needed to grow bread wheat.

Jim Amaral, owner of Borealis Bread's three Maine bakeries and a pioneer in working with local grains, is "absolutely thrilled and excited" to see some real movement on the issue with the federal grant.

"Growing grain here is different than growing it out in the Midwest," Amaral said. "The weather is different, the climate is different, the soils are different. So the research they're going to be doing is critical to re-establishing a healthy grain economy in New England."

Maine potato farmers have been growing barley and oats for years, Mallory said, "but bread wheat is different, because you have different quality standards. The wheat has to have a high protein content, especially for artisanal baking."

WEATHER THREAT

Over the past decade, Amaral has been working with a few Maine farmers to obtain locally grown whole-wheat flour for his breads. Most of the farmers he works with are in Aroostook County, where Maine wheat is grown in rotation with the potato crop, but there are also small wheat fields in places such as Norridgewock and Dresden.

Normally, Amaral tries to source 100 percent of his whole-wheat flour in Maine.

He uses 70,000 pounds of flour annually...