2011 Keynotes & Presenters

NOTE:  THE 2012 KEYNOTES SPEAKERS & PRESENTERS WILL BE POSTED SOON!

	Chef Michel Nischan, keynote speaker, wears many hats, from dynamic restaurant owner, award-winning cookbook author, and media personality to food policy advocate and non-profit foundation CEO.A proponent of sustainable farming, local and regional food systems, and heritage recipes, Michel has long been a leader in the movement to honor local, pure, simple, and delicious cooking. He is owner and founder of Dressing Room, his homegrown restaurant in Westport, CT, and CEO and president of the Wholesome Wave, which is dedicated to nourishing neighborhoods by supporting increased production and access to healthy, fresh, and affordable locally grown food for the well-being of all.A son of displaced farmers, Nischan grew up with a deep appreciation for sustainable agriculture and those who work the land. As a professional chef and advocate for a more healthful, organic and sustainable food future, he has built on those childhood values and become a catalyst for change and new initiatives in local and regional food systems. Michel is the recipient of the 2011 IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) Humanitarian of the Year Award.He lives in Fairfield, Connecticut with his wife, Lori, and their five children. www.wholesomewave.org.
	Molly O’Neill, keynote speaker, is the author of three cookbooks, including the best-selling “New York Cookbook,” “A Well Seasoned Appetite,” and “The Pleasure of Your Company,” hosted the PBS series “Great Food,” and was, for ten years, a reporter with the New York Times and the food columnist for its Sunday magazine. O’Neill won the Julia Child/IACP Award for cookbooks and was awarded three James Beard citations for books, journalism and television as well as the society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and is the editor of the Library of America’s anthology, “American Food Writing.”Born in Columbus, Ohio, O’Neill graduated from Denison University and attended La Varenne  in Paris. “Mostly True,” her memoir of growing up in a major league baseball family was published by Scribner in May 2007 and critics have called it “a magical tale of growing up in the middle of the American dream.” Her work has appeared in magazines ranging from The New Yorker and the New York Times to Readers Digest and Life.Over the last decade, O’Neill has traveled the United States gathering American food stories and recipes and creating events to fight hunger and support local food sources and food artisans. This adventure resulted in her seminal book, “One Big Table, a portrait of American Cooking” published last November and the first in a series of books that celebrate American culture and cooking. Published this summer in e-books, “This American Burger” and “This American Pie,” are drawn from the on-going effort to preserve and celebrate the nation’s cooking as a living, constantly changing expression of American culture.  www.onebigtable.com.
	Kerry Altiero is the chef/owner of Cafe Miranda which he and his family opened in Maine in 1993. His menu is fueled by his passion for great food, multi-culture cuisines, his Italian heritage and Rockland, Maine.  Chef Altiero oversees a large, seasonal menu which features fresh local ingredients, house-made pastas, and their signature foccacia bread that is made daily in Café Miranda’s wood fired oven.  Chef Altiero was recently named one of Maine’s “Inspired Chefs” by Maine Magazine. www.cafemiranda.com.
	Jim Amaral is the owner and founder of Borealis Breads.  The story of Borealis Breads starts not in Maine but at Sally Ann’s Bakery in Massachusetts.  It was there that 15 year-old Jim was hired as a doughtnut dipper and his love affair with food began.  Jim opened Boadacious Breads in 1993 which quickly developed a faithful following.  Borealis Breads finally came into being in 1997 when the bakery relocated and Jim held a customer contest to find a new name.  The success of Jim’s techniques has led to the opening of two more bakeries, one in Wells, Maine and a third in Portland.  Borealis Breads currently uses Maine-grown wheat in several of their breads and encourages its customers to “tread lightly on the planet” by purchasing locally grown and produced foods and by respecting all of our food communities both local and global. www.borealisbreads.com
	Kate Baldwin and Amanda Merrow won a bid from the Peconic Land Trust to begin Amber Waves Farm, a not-for-profit organic farm and educational organization designed to teach the local community about food and farming issues, expand the variety and availability of locally grown organic food, and to maintain a beautiful open space in downtown Amagansett, New York. Amber Waves Farm launched the Amagansett Wheat Project to reintroduce wheat and other small grains to the Hamptons.  Kate and Amanda are not only interested in growing local produce, they are interested in becoming a piece of the community where they can educate locals on why eating tomatoes in January is not very good for the environment. www.amberwavesfarm.org.
	Albie Barden is an ordained Episcopal Priest, a co-founder of the Common Ground Fair and the Kneading Conference, and co-owner of Maine Wood Heat.  Albie founded the Masonry Stove Guild and published the masonry Stove Guild Newsletter.  He also co-founded the Masonry Heater Association of North America and the Association of Masonry Heater and Bake Oven Professionals and has authored several books and construction manuals on masonry heater construction.   Albie has been an organic gardener for forty years and has studied Plant Spirit Medicine.  He conducts Sacred Fires in the Huichol tradition, preserving, growing out and freely distributing the heritage flint corn, Abenaki Rose.  Albie travels throughout North America and the world building and teaching how to build masonry heaters and wood-fired ovens. www.mainewoodheat.com.
	Scott Barden co-owns Maine Wood Heat, his family’s wood-fired oven design and construction business, and designs and installs turnkey Le Panyol ovens for clients around the U.S.  Recently, he is interested in experimenting with combustion effects by adjusting the two major variables, fuel and airflow, and observing how the results relate to oven design and how design alters these two factors.  The requests from bakers and restaurateurs for unique designs, both portable and turnkey, has put to good use his College of the Atlantic education which emphasized using an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving.  It has inspired him to broaden his use of different types of woods and metals, challenging pre-conceived notions of what works with fire.  His goal is to continually improve both design and energy efficiency; instead of growth that leaps from production of 4 to 50 units per year Scott prefers slower growth enabling the effort put into each oven to be as interesting as the last. www.mainewoodheat.com.
	Will Bonsall is the director of the Scatterseed Project, which is dedicated to collecting, propagating, and sharing our seed heritage. Will is an Advisory Board member and major curator for the Seed Savers’ Exchange in Decorah, Iowa. Among the seed collections he curates are hundreds of small grain varieties. www.scatterseed.org
	Doug Brown is the owner of Oak Haven Bakery in Granville Ferry, Nova Scotia.  Doug mixes and kneads all of his breads by hand, and bakes all of his creations, including naturally-leavened hearty breads made with spelt and kamut flour, pita breads, granola and sweets, in a wood-fired oven.  His products can be found in supermarkets across Atlantic Canada and are certified organic by Maritime Certified Organic Growers.  He has worked with chefs Michael Smith and Ryan Dunn at local food events in the Maritimes. www.acornorganic.org/farmers/Oakhavenbakery.html.
	Carol Bryan and Richard Scott own Scythe Supply, Inc., makers of customized scythes that use Maine White Ash and blades imported from Austria.  They will demonstrate use of their scythes and answer questions about small scale grain harvesting including how to convert a lawn to amber waves of grain. www.scythesupply.com.
	Gabe Clark graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in Agricultural Economics.  After moving to Maine, Gabe managed a project evaluating grain production in dairy operations and for human consumption.  He worked with farmers to grow wheat, barley, triticale and hulless and hulled oats and to create cost of production and market analysis.  Subsequently, Gabe studied the cost of grain production in Maine for the USDA Agricultural Research Service.  Gabe owns and operates Cold Spring Ranch and is the Agricultural Sustainability Program Manager for Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences. www.coldspringranch.com.
	Cate Conway began her baking adventures at the Morning Glory Bakery in Bar Harbor, Maine.  It was at this bakery that Cate learned the joy of baking delicious bread and sweets in the company of friends, for the enjoyment of the community.  During her early years of motherhood, Cate altered her baking repertoire to include whole grains as a way to maximize the nutritious content of the food she prepared for her family.  Dancing Embers Bakery was born out of Cate’s love of baking and her family’s experience with wood fired ovens.  Today Dancing Embers Bakery is a small, home based bakery, dedicated to using pure, locally grown and produced ingredients to make delicious and nutritious baked goods to share with her family, friends and community.
	Dorn Cox is a two-time NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant awardee. Cox has completed his 2006 grant for Farm-based Biofuel: Production, Storage, Co-generation and Education. His 2007 Self Contained Oilseed Processing System and Educational Initiative grant is in progress. Dorn has placed his farm’s emphasis on developing on-farm energy solutions. Dorn said that the goal of his operation is to reduce production costs as much as possible by eliminating off-farm inputs, including processed feed, antibiotics, fuel, fertilizer and amendments. This goal is well on its way with the infrastructure already built to provide all the fuel processing needs for the farm, and with the recovery of organic material through composting of manure recovered from hay customers. The goal of providing his own high quality processed feed is close to being achieved with the first nutritional test results showing that sunflower pressings store without any spoilage and according to UNH nutritional experts provide an 18% protein feed that can be fed as a 1/3 ration for ruminants and a larger percentage for poultry and hogs. Tuckaway Farm has three main parts: custom machine work, crop and agricultural technology, research and evelopment, and livestock and crop production.  Dorn has 18 cows, some polo ponies, hogs, donkeys, goats, chickens and gambe birds.  Combined with ongoing horse related activities (poplo, fox hunting, and therapeutic training) on the farm, a strong market base for selling the diverse farm products is being built into the infrastructure.  www.nrcs.org.
	Harold (Dusty) Dowse has been baking bread for nearly a half century and it is his prime avocation.  He lately has become a semi-professional baker with eyes on opening a bakery when he retires from his day job, which is being a Professor of Biology and Cooperating Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Maine.  He is also a dyed-in-the wool organic gardener, having followed faithfully the traditions he learned from his grandfather in the 1950′s.  He has been fortunate to be able to cross his scientific expertise over into his baking, including studies in sourdough and yeast microbiology and the physics of refractory materials and heat flow.  He is directing the Maine Artisan Bread Fair for a second year. www.bangordailynews.com.
	Randy George founded the Red Hen Baking Company in 1999 with his wife, Eliza Cain.  Together they and 30 employees operate Red Hen.  In the fall of 2007, after eight years in Duxbury, Vermont, they moved the bakery to Middlesex, Vermont where they have added a cafe with a full line of pastries in addition to over fifteen varieties of hearth-baked, certified organic breads. www.redhenbaking.com.
	John Howe is an engineer and inventor and the owner of Howe Engineering Company.  He has researched and developed bicycle-powered generators, solar-powered tractors and a thresher/winnower for small-scale growers which he will demonstrate at the Kneading Conference. He also lectures on peak oil and other related issues and consults on skiing and tennis. For the past ten years, John’s work has focused on the picture of a brief, high-energy, industrialized world on the brink of collapse.  He presents a clear picture of the Oil Age and its imminent demise and identifies legitimate paths for personal, community and national survival. www.solarcarandtractor.com.
	Jeffrey Hamelman is an employee-owner of the King Arthur Flour Company in Vermont and Director of the King Arthur Bakery.  In 1998 he became the 76th Certified Master Baker in the U.S. Hamelman has baked and taught in North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Africa and is the author of Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes. www.kingarthurflour.com.
	Ciril Hitz is the Department Chair for the International Baking and Pastry Institute at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island.  Ciril received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and then returned to his native Switzerland to complete a three-year apprenticeship as a Pastry Chef/Chocolatier.  Ciril has been recognized both nationally and internationally with numerous awards and accomplishments, including Pastry Art & Designmagazine’s 2007 and 2008 Top Ten Pastry Chefs in America, 2006 Gold Medal National Bread and Pastry Team Championship (USA), and 2002 Silver Medal Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie (France).  He has been a guest instructor/expert at many national and international culinary events and schools and served on the Advisory Board of the Bread Bakers Guild of America.  He has been featured on the NBC Today Show, The Food Network, The Learning Channel, and Ciao Italia and his decorative bread work was exhibited in 2006 at the COPIA Museum in Napa, California.  He is the author of two books, Baking Artisan Bread and Baking Artisan Pastries and Bread, as well as numerous magazine articles, and is the producer of two DVD series, Bread Art and Better Bread.  More information about his work can be viewed on his website: www.breadhitz.com.
	Andrew Janjigian is an Associate Editor for Cook’s Illustrated Magazine, where he developed a pizza dough recipe that allows anyone with a standard kitchen oven to easily produce great pies. He earned a Master’s Degree in mycology from Harvard, and worked as an organic chemist for 12 years, both of which gave him skills he puts to practical use when developing new bread and pizza recipes. He lives in Cambridge, MA, and bakes in a wood-fired oven he built with the help of his wife, and 30 or so of his closest friends. The Cook’s pizza dough recipe.
	Nancy Harmon Jenkins is a food writer with a passionate interest in Mediterranean cultures and cuisines, sustainable agriculture, and farm-to-market connections. Author of half a dozen highly acclaimed cookbooks, she writes for the New York Times, Saveur, and Food & Wine, and divides her time between her farmhouse outside of Cortona, Italy, and the coast of Maine. www.nancyharmonjenkins.com.
	Dr. Stephen Jones is a plant breeder and the director of The Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center of Washington State University in Mount Vernon. His research has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Gourmet Magazine, Discover Magazine, National Geographic News and on the PBS show “Eyes of Nye” (with Bill Nye the Science Guy). Recently he authored the “Sustainable Agriculture” and “Wheat” entries for the World Book Encyclopedia. He has a Ph.D in genetics from the University of California at Davis and has been at Washington State University since 1991. He developed some of the most widely grown winter wheats in the Pacific Northwest. He is now working with small grains researchers, millers, bakers, and farmers from the U.S. Northeast to the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia and Alaska to reinvigorate local grains systems.  www.wsu.edu.
	Michael and Sandy Jubinsky are co-owners of the Stone Turtle Baking and Cooking School in Lyman, Maine.  For nearly 25 years Michael was the senior spokesman for the King Arthur Flour Company and conducted baking seminars for them in almost every state in the USA.  Michael and Sandy have been operating the Stone Turtle Baking and Cooking School for 4 years and focus on bread making using a beautiful Le Panyol wood-fired oven.  More information is available on their website site: www.stoneturtlebaking.com.
	Melina Kelson-Podolsky is a chef instructor at the School of Culinary Arts of Kendall College.  She set out to be an English literature professor but got sidetracked between college and grad school by her baking hobby. The hobby soon blossomed into an obsession with bread and a career that rose to a high point last summer when she spearheaded the construction of an outdoor Roman-style brick oven, based on a design by Alan Scott, at Kendall, where she’s taught since 2005.Melina, who grew up in a family of food writers—her parents, Allen and Carla Kelson, were long-time chief restaurant critics for Chicago magazine—teaches all courses in the baking and pastry department but attributes her love affair with bread to its infinite possibilities. www.kendall/culinary.edu.
	Amber Lambke is a founder of the Kneading Conference which began in Skowhegan, Maine, in 2007. Concerned about their struggling rural town, she and several friends decided that restoring grain cultivation to area farms could be a sound foundation for sustainable development.  Like most states throughout the nation, until the mid 1850s Maine grew 100% of the grains that fed its people and animals.  The Kneading Conference was designed to bring together farmers, millers, bakers, researchers and eaters – everyone needed to rebuild and support a local grain system.  When it became evident that farmers without a mill to process their harvest wouldn’t grow grain, she and Michael Scholz, another founder of the Kneading Conference, formed a partnership and purchased the empty county jail and are now in the midst of converting it into a grist mill.  Amber, who was a speech therapist before becoming a grist mill owner, is Executive Director of the Maine Grain Alliance, the nonprofit organization responsible for the Kneading Conference, the Maine Artisan Bread Fair, and educational baking workshops for school children, and lives in Skowhegan with her husband and two children.
	Jennifer Lapidus, Jennifer Lapidus is currently the Organic Grains Project Coordinator for the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, a 30-year old non-profit serving the Carolinas through promoting local and organic agriculture by inspiring, educating, and organizing farmers and consumers. Jennifer’s role with CFSA is two-fold: to lay the groundwork for a viable grains economy in the Carolinas and to link the farmer, miller, and baker in the Carolinas through the establishment of a micro mill, Carolina Ground, L3C, a mill dedicated to grains grown and ground on Carolina ground. Jennifer is also a spent baker, having owned and operated her Natural Bridge Bakery for 14 years, from 1994 to 2008, producing naturally leavened breads baked in a wood-fired brick oven.
	Ellen Mallory is the Sustainable Agriculture Secialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.  Her work focuses on soil quality and biologically-based soil fertility for grain and vegetable systems.  Ellen is leading a 4-year project involving farmers, millers, bakers and other resasearchers in Maine and Vermont to advance organic read wheat production through research, on-farm devmonstrations, regional workshops, and farmer exchanges with accomplished Quebec and Danish organic grain growers. www.extension.umaine.edu/localwheat
	J. Patrick Manley III has been studying, designing and bulding wood-burning masonry heaters and wood-fired brick pizza and bread ovens since 1978.  He has studied masonry heater design and construction in Sweden and Finland and travels throughout Maine and the U.S. building both heaters and bake ovens. Pat founded Masons on a Mission (MOM) twelve years ago.  MOM builds clean wood burning and vented masonry cooking stoves for Mayan families who live in the mountains of Guatemala.  Millions of these families burn open fires within their dwellings without proper ventilation which exposes the families to high concentrations of wood smoke causing respiratory illness and the loss of vision for the women who cook over these “3 stone fires” daily.  Patrick travels to Guatemala every January/February to build stoves, bringing along a few dozen North American volunteers to help him. www.midcoast.com/masonsonamission.
	Richard Miscovich teaches artisan bread baking at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island.  In addition to teaching culinary students, Richard is renowned for his skill teaching artisan techniques to non-professional baking enthusiasts, and he is a regular guest instructor at venues around the country.  He spends the summer months in coastal North Carolina, baking organic hearth breads in the wood-fired brick oven he built with his wife.  He serves onthe Board of the Bread Bakers Guild of America. www.jwu.edu.
	Barak Olins, founder and owner of Zu Bakery in Freeport, Maine.  ”In retrospect, it makes sense that I have become a bread-baker. My very first memory is of bread that was intended for a Guinea Pig named Rupert who lived in the classroom of a school I attended when I was two. I am certain that this is a memory rather than something that my parents retold to me because it is a flavor that I can still taste. I am also certain, and this part was retold to me, that my teacher bought at least two loaves of bread and carrots every day, because I was not the only child who snacked along when feeding Rupert. Perhaps the highest reward of being a bread-baker is that, on occasion, someone will taste my bread and then suddenly find themselves transported elsewhere- to their childhood or travels or a faint memory of some flavor. This is precisely what an artist dreams to do.”  www.zubakery.com.
	Alison Pray co-owns Standard Baking Company in Portland, Maine with her husband and partner, Matt James. The European-style bakery is famous for its baguettes, rustic loaves, and daily specials of brioches, galettes and focaccia and for using local, seasonal ingredients.
	Dara Reimers, owner of the Bread Shack in Auburn Maine, participated in the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie (the World Cup or Olympics of Baking) in the Spring of 2008. The Coupe is an international baking competition that happens every four years at Europain, the world baking exposition, in Paris, France. The exhibition attracts more than 80,000 visitors. Dara was one of three bakers that represented the United States. She won a place on Team USA by winning the Bread Bakers Guild of America national title in Artistic Design. The United States placed fourth. Dara began baking in 1989 and is a graduate of the inaugural class of the Notter School of Pastry Arts in Orlando, Florida
	Jonathan Rubenstein is a rabbi, baker, baking teacher, and mental health professional.  He is co-rabbi, with his wife Linda Motzkin, of Temple Sinai in Saratoga Springs, New York.  In 2004 he started Slice of Heaven Breads, a not-for-profit, volunteer staffed, charitable bakery which operates out of the synagogue’s kitchen.  The bakery has an open kitchen which offers instruction to individuals and groups and provides opportunities for training and employment for differently-abled people.  Rabbi Jonathan is also Director of Pastoral Care at Four Winds-Saratoga, a private psychiatric hospital and has worked as a chaplain in a substance abuse program and a state correctional facility. www.templesinai.org.
	Stu Silverstein is an artist who bakes a lot of bread, builds earth ovens and writes about the process.  He co-owns Railroad Square Cinema, Maine’s premier art house, and for many years owned a brick oven cafe.  Stu has also co-produced and directed the award-winning film Dead River Cut that happens to be the most requested movie at the Maine State Prison, no joke.  Currently he is working on his latest book, Bread, Earth and Fire.  Way before that, he spent a lot of time driving VW buses across the country searching for great bread, but he never found any, and that’s why he learned to bake.  Stu maintains the lively blog :ibreadhunter.blogspot.com.
	Various people! Naan Sense is a Show & Tell program of short presentations about innovative projects.