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OCG Show Daily 3 1 Sunday, June 4, 2017 SLOW FOOD USA LAUNCHES SLOW FOOD NATIONS Slow Food USA is launching Slow Food Nations with an inaugural food festival in Denver, Colorado, from July 14 through 16, 2017. Inspired by Slow Food International's biennial Terra Madre gathering in Turin, Italy, Slow Food Nations will combine the energy of a street food festival, rigor of an aca- demic conference and inspiration of a cultural exchange. Alice Waters, Ron Finley, Simran Sethi, Jack Johnson, Hosea Rosenberg and Alon Shaya are just a few of many food movement lead- ers joining the festival. Entrance to the festival is free and includes a taste marketplace with 100 exhibitors and producers, an outdoor culinary stage, gardening and cooking activities for kids and families, heritage food tastings, author talks and many more events. Slow Food leaders from around the globe will participate in an all-day dele- gate summit on Friday, including small group discussions, focused working groups and a lunch by Alice Waters that will explore school lunch as an academic subject. Delegates will then serve as hosts and speakers during the weekend festival. The first round of ticketed events went on sale Monday, April 10. Events include taste workshops, block parties, regional food and farm tours, roundtable discussions and one-of-a-kind dinners. Slow Food Nations reimagines the food festival to inspire individuals and communities to change the world through food that is good, clean and fair. As Slow Food Founder Carlo Petrini says, "If you want to change the world, don't do it with sadness; do it with joy!" For the full lineup and details, visit www.slowfoodnations.org. HAND FORGED ARTISAN BREAD FROM HEWN By Lorrie Baumann The sourdough starter at Hewn has a gen- der but no name. She's the mother of all the bread sold at this Evanston, Illinois bakery owned by Julie Matthei and Ellen King. Matthei serves as the bakery's Director of Business Operations, while King is the Head Baker. Together, they and their bakery staff produce and sell about 130 loaves a day as well as run a wholesale business that serves restau- rants and specialty stores throughout Chicago. That requires that they give their starter lots of tender loving care, feeding her twice a day, every day, whether the bakery is open or closed. "It's like having a pet almost – the matter of keeping it alive and then having it give back," King says. "She gets fed twice a day, and we literally treat her like a queen." Hewn celebrates its fourth anniversary this June, and in that time, there's only been a baking day or two when all the bread on the shelves did- n't come from that mother. "We did have a time early on, when someone didn't realize there was no more in the walk-in and threw it all away," King said. "It was a very bad day." Another local baker donated some of her starter, and within a couple of days, the yeasty air of Hewn had re-asserted itself and re-established a colony of wild yeasts that carried the unique fla- vors of Hewn. Everything at Hewn is made from scratch daily. Breads are hand-mixed, hand-shaped and naturally fermented without commercial yeast. The only ingredients are flour, water, starter and sea salt. King uses flours that are organ- ic, sustainable and local whenever she can, which has resulted in making part- nerships with local farmers to bring back heritage grains after she'd exhausted the local supply of organic grain. "I think it's important to be able to tell customers where the flour comes from," King says. Dough is mixed by hand, and then turned every 30 minutes over a four-hour period. Then it's shaped and placed into pans to rest overnight. In the morning, it's baked. It's a labor-intensive process that takes two days all told – first a day of feeding the starter so there's enough to leaven that day's bread and enough to save for the next day, and then a day of mixing the dough, letting it rest and rise and then baking it. "It's a solid two days," King says. From the start of the mix to the bake, the bread is fermented about 20 hours. That long fermentation time with wild yeasts unassisted by commercial yeast plus flours made from heritage wheat and spelt mean that the flour's gluten is developed slowly and then broken down again before the bread is baked, which allows some of Hewn's customers who can't eat other bread to enjoy a simple sandwich again. These customers have gluten sensitivities – not celiac disease, which is another serious medical condi- tion – but intolerances that prevent them from eating and enjoying the convention- al breads they could buy in the supermar- ket. "That's been pretty amazing – to have a bakery that I feel is really helping to nourish our community," King said. In addition to 20 different naturally fermented breads, including traditional baguettes, croissants and brioche, King makes some sweet pas- tries, and Hewn also sells coffee and sand- wiches from its 2,400 square-foot shop in Evanston. Three quar- ters of that is the pro- duction area, and the remainder is the retail space furnished with many hand-made fix- tures that reflect King's deep interest in American history – in addition to her training as a classical chef at Seattle Culinary Academy, she also holds a BA in history from St. Norbert College and an MA in history from the University of Maine. The ter- razzo floors are original to the building, which was built in 1928 on a site once occupied by Evanston's original high school. The metal that faces the walls was salvaged from an old barn roof, and the shelves and counters were built from lumber obtained from an old white oak tree in Wilmette, Illinois, that had to be cut down. The shop's exterior light came from a closed Wisconsin factory, and the doors between the shop and kitchen are made out of old Michigan cypress pickle barrels. A bench in the retail shop was once an old church pew, and it's become something of a draw for elderly neighborhood residents who like to sit and watch the come and go. "They all come in at roughly the same time. Sometimes they're grumpy," says Matthei. "It's kind of an old-school place," adds King. "For me, part of the fun is seeing people forced to share a small space – and then connect." The shop fits into a quiet mixed use urban residential neighborhood with low- rise apartment buildings and ground- floor retail storefronts along a two lane street with a 25-miles-per- hour speed limit. There are apart- ments over the store, and one of the shops at the other end of Hewn's building was once occu- pied by a family-run neighbor- hood grocery called Bernstein Bros. "Once in a while, we have a customer come in and say they used to go to that grocery store," Matthei says. "They're glad there's food back in the building." She met King a few years ago after she heard about an underground bread club that King was running out of her home. "I had heard about this woman who was making bread, and it was really, really good," she says. Matthei sought out the bread and became a regular customer, and as the months went on, she mentioned to King that she'd like to become a partner in her business. Six months later, they'd formed a company, and in another six months, they opened Hewn in June, 2013. When the two of them were making their initial plans, they thought they'd be making and selling 30 to 40 loaves of bread per day, closing the shop for the day when that ran out. Things didn't work out that way, and the bakery's floor plan has now doubled in size, employs about 200, and is selling wholesale to restaurants and specialty stores in the Chicago area as well as in its own retail shop. Because their pro- duction process takes so long, the retail day ends when the last loaf of bread is sold. "There are days when it's 5:00 and we sell the last loaf," Matthei says. "I love those days." It's never been hard finding cus- tomers, Matthei says. "Evanston's become a food hub. It's really exploded; we were very fortunate in being at the nexus of that." KLONDIKE CHEESE COMPANY INTRODUCES NEW ODYSSEY PACKAGING Klondike Cheese Company of Monroe, Wisconsin, is proud to announce the launch of a new packaging for its Odyssey ® Reduced Fat Greek Sour Cream. The eye-catching new packaging is designed to appeal to customers and increase retail sales velocity. "Our new Odyssey packaging high- lights Klondike's commitment to making a healthier alternative to sour cream," said Teena Buholzer, Marketing Director at Klondike Cheese Company. "We understand what our reduced fat Greek sour cream customer likes and responds to, and we designed our Odyssey Reduced Fat Greek Sour Cream packag- ing to appeal to that demographic." Klondike's all-natural, gluten-free, rBST-free Odyssey Reduced Fat Greek Sour Cream is thick and creamy with the perfect amount of tang and lower choles- terol, calories and 40 percent less fat than other leading brands. Its unique flavor pairs well with all types of foods that use sour cream. It can be used as a base for dips and spreads or topped on your potato and tacos. Eat it with fresh fruit for a nutri- tious snack that is packed with protein. For more information about Klondike Cheese and Odyssey, including detailed information about retail and food or industrial sizes, visit www.odysseygreekyogurt.com. About Klondike Cheese Company Klondike Cheese Company has been pro- ducing award-winning cheese at the same location since the late 1800s. Family- owned and operated in Monroe, Wisconsin by the Buholzer family for four generations, the secret to Klondike's quality is a com- bination of state-of-the-art equipment, its own special recipes and time-honored traditions of cheese making. Klondike, which markets about 80 percent of its feta for foodservice, also sells its feta at retail using the Odyssey Feta Cheese brand name. For more information, visit www .klondikecheese.com, call 608.325.3021 or stop by booth #2315.