Bakery Congress 2013
As Breadsong already posted about [1], this past weekend the Bakery Congress 2013 [2], the largest annual baking industry event in Western Canada, was held in Vancouver, BC. As tradeshows go it was cheap and I was looking for an excuse for a bike ride on a beautiful sunny day, so I pedaled over to the PNE to take a look.
The minute you walked in the door you could smell that this wasn't just any tradeshow.
Breads and sweets everywhere!
I chatted with Ross from Nunweiler's Flour Mill [3] quite a bit and picked up a couple of bags of their organic flour, including their Red Fife Flour [4]. I'm looking forward to giving it a try!
Lest we forget we are in Canada: hockey-themed giveaways.
Ah, the slicers. Do those every bring back memories...
Need a mixer, anyone?
This picture I took for Song of the Baker, who is always telling me about how great the flour from Anita's Organic Mill [5] in Chilliwack is. I will get out there to check out their store, one of these days.
Baking presentations were running throughout the day. Here Craig Ponsford [6], former BBGA chairman and part of the Gold Medal winning Team USA at Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, and Tracey Muzzolini, from Saskatoon and who has also competed in the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie with Team Canada, prepare to present on making whole wheat baguettes.
Scoring the loaves.
Craig asks "How many of you are getting asked by your customers about gluten free?" He then went on to talk a bit about the benefits of "whole-milled" whole wheat flours as opposed to whole grain flours that are actually reconstituted from white flour.
Back on the floor, you can see that there were a lot of vendors and attendees here. Vendors were selling ingredients, machines, packaging, ...
Errr.... probes too. I think this was to measure the volume of the loaves? A bit over the top, IMO, but if you bake tens of thousands of loaves a day that kind of precision matters, I suppose.
I had an enjoyable time and was able to snack on enough samples of sweets that I was thankful for the long bike ride home to work off some of it!