MAINE — The Maine Grain Alliance announces its Welcome Spring and celebrate Easter baking this March with Christy Timon, Abe Faber & Andrew Janjigian! Choose one class, or attend two Easter baking workshops at a discounted price! To register go to: https://kneadingconference.com/events-workshops/

“Pastiera” Italian Easter Ricotta and Wheatberry Tart with Christy Timon & Abe Faber, March 23. 4-6 p.m. Zoom. $50

Made to celebrate the return of Spring and rebirth, Pastiera is an Easter dessert made with cooked faro, pastry cream, and filling. This versatile treat can be made for small groups or scaled up for larger production numbers in a professional setting. Whether you are baking for friends and family or a busy bakery, this tart is the perfect spring addition.

Christy Timon founded Clear Flour Bread in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1983 in response to persistent requests for regular production of the naturally leavened breads she was baking for her catering business, Café Small. Abe Faber came along a year later for a “temporary” job to fill in the gaps in a young artist’s pay and ended up instead gaining a wife as well as a life’s work and calling.

Together, Christy and Abe grew the bakery to produce a wide range of European authentic breads, pastry, and viennoiserie in a manner that honored, preserved, and nurtured the art and craft of traditional baking. For 35 years they enjoyed the daily challenges of running the bakery, as they acquainted their employees and customers with the pleasure, hard work, and nearly alchemical mix of science and craft involved in transforming flour, water, and yeast, into bread and pastry.

In late 2017 Christy and Abe “passed the torch” of their beloved bakery to a younger generation of owners. Now that they have retired from the daily 24/7 life of running a bakery they look forward to sharing their skills to assist other bakers around the country in developing, refining, and troubleshooting artisan baked goods and processes in their own communities through their work as Timber Baking Consultants.

Armenian Easter Bread with Andrew Janjigian, March 27. 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Zoom. $50

Join baking instructor and recipe developer Andrew Janjigian (@wordloaf) in an exploration of choreg, a rich, aromatic Armenian sweet bread flavored with nigella and mahlab and coated with sesame seeds.

Often called “Armenian brioche” because of the large amount of butter and eggs in the dough, choreg is traditionally served at Easter as an indulgence after winter and Lent, but many Armenians eat it year-round as well. It can be formed into individual round or knotted rolls, and—more commonly—into long braided loaves, and the braids are often made with three strands of dough, to represent the Holy Trinity.

Andrew will share his own recipe for choreg, which incorporates a tangzhong, an Asian baking technique known for extending the keeping-qualities of breads, something that is especially helpful here, since choreg’s high concentration of sugar normally makes it prone to staling quickly. It’s an easy and delicious recipe, just in time for Easter and the return of Spring.

Scholarships
Thanks to a generous donation from the Bill & Joan Alfond Foundation the Maine Grain Alliance is able to offer scholarship opportunities to young bakers, farmers, and aspiring grain professionals interested in expanding Maine’s grain economy.

Applicant must be from Maine, conducting business in Maine, or planning to conduct business in Maine. Apply for scholarship here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeK_K59THgmqfbMoSjMJNCgZYSJ_JtNAO0ZLyLKfZgQmNUNOw/viewform

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