We figured Ottawa has quite the appetite for grains, considering the number of craft breweries and popular boulangeries in the region, but the steady stream of sourdough specialists, granola gobblers and focaccia fanatics at the Real Bread Festival last Saturday was all the proof we kneaded that flour power is on the rise in Ottawa.
The Real Bread Festival. Photo: Shaily Allison.
The festival, held outside Almanac Urban Mill & Bakery in Ottawa’s east end, was created and hosted by Almanac, sponsored by Edible Ottawa, and featured a number of local bread makers, including The Black Walnut, Bread By Us, Nat’s Bread, Pure Bread, True Loaf Bread Company, and Your Bread Box, as well as local food businesses Coconut Lagoon, Top Shelf Preserves, The Artery Community Roasters, and Dominion City Brewing Co. (whose lovely beer garden is located just next door to Almanac).
Photo: Shaily Allison.
The festival was set up market-style, so festival-goers could sample bread from each bakery and shop available products. While the bread sampling and shopping was quite the treat, there was also a home baker competition where contestants submitted their own homemade breads for the judges’ consideration. Competition categories included sourdough, cheese, enriched/inclusions, whole grain, fresh-milled/heritage, and pastry. Winners were announced and gifted prizes in the late afternoon. There was also a tour of Almanac’s Urban Mill and a keynote talk in Dominion City’s beer garden with Chris Wooding, co-founder of Ironwood Organics, that focused on better bread for a better planet and sharing knowledge about the relationship we have as humans with the environment, our food, health, sustainability, and resiliency. These values are core to Almanac’s business and mission.
Photo: Shaily Allison.
Photo: Shaily Allison.
Almanac owner Gabrielle Prud’homme shared with us that the festival was inspired by The Real Bread Campaign movement launched in the United Kingdom, where people are committed to finding and sharing ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities, and better for the planet. Prud’homme is hopeful that festival-goers not only enjoyed the day and the locally made bread, but that they would experience a “spark” when thinking about bread and start to consider where it comes from, what flour was used, how it was milled, and where the grain was grown—the “grain chain” as she calls it.
Photo: Shaily Allison.
With years of experience in the restaurant industry, Prud’homme speaks with passion about the uptake of the local food movement, and how people often look for locally sourced produce and get excited about local meats (game) and eggs, but bread seems left out of the conversation. It’s one thing to have freshly baked bread, but often that bread is prepared with commercially processed flour, not heritage grain that’s been locally milled.
“A lot of people don’t even know they want it. There is a huge community of people who do care about their bread, but there’s this lack of awareness of heritage grains and local milling. It’s like we made a faster, cheaper way of making bread and forgot about the rest, and lost the connection.”
Photo: Shaily Allison.
One hope she has for the festival is that it fosters a collaborative community for local bakers who make bread to come together and share their products, knowledge and resources with each other, hopefully leading to supportive and productive relationships in the local baking industry. She would like the festival to help create visibility for smaller bakeries and bread-makers, and raise awareness around the impact of local bakers using heritage grain and locally milled flour.
Photo: Shaily Allison.
Almanac started selling locally milled flour and heritage grains in 2019 at farmer’s markets around the region. In early 2021 they moved into their own space, expanding to include a small bakery in the room next door to their flour mill. Not only can you buy their flour, grains, and sourdough starter, but all of the delicious goods prepared in their bakery are made with their own flour, milled in-house. Prud’homme says she would like to do more events and workshops, and hopes they can find a larger and more central space in which to do so. She also mentioned that the Real Bread Festival is something they’d like to host annually.
Almanac Urban Mill & Bakery is located at at 5510 Canotek Road. Their bakery and mill are open for sales and pickups Wed–Fri 9am–5:30pm, Sat 10am–6pm, and Sun 10am–5pm. They also sell at several farmer’s markets around the city. Follow Almanac on Instagram @almanacgrain.
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