Kneading Conference 2025

Harold “Dusty” Dowse has been baking for a half century and is the Baking Education Coordinator for the Maine Grain Alliance, Director of the Maine Artisan Bread Fair, and Resident Baker. He has developed a year-round workshop program to help participants develop artisan baking skills and start bakeries. He is Professor Emeritus of Biology and Mathematics at the University of Maine and brings this background in research and teaching to his study of bakery science and practice. He leads a team of bakers that produces bread for the volunteers at the Common Ground Fair, put on by the Maine Organic... Read more

Formerly a speech language pathologist, Amber Lambke shifted gears to respond to a community need for grain processing infrastructure and is the co-founder and CEO of Maine Grains, Inc., carried by specialty food stores and used by bakeries, breweries and chefs throughout the Northeast. She is also the founding director of the non-profit Maine Grain Alliance and its flagship event, the Kneading Conference. A creative problem solver, mother of two, weekend baker, and driving force behind Maine’s sustainable foods movement, Amber has worked with local businesses, state and national leaders and... Read more

Tristan Noyes is the Executive Director for the Maine Grain Alliance. He is also the co-founder of GROMAINE, an organic farm in Aroostook County. GROMAINE specializes in the production of wide variety of vegetables, with a special concentration on lettuce. The farm sells produce to a diverse array of restaurants, colleges, independent markets, farmers markets, mail order customers and direct-to-consumer farm shares in Maine, New England, & New York. Tristan grew up in northern Maine in a farming family who taught the importance of socially responsible environmental and economic stewardship of our... Read more

Sonoko is a cook, teacher, and author of Wafu Cooking, Japanese Home Cooking, Mai and The Missing Melon, Rice Craft, and The Poetical Pursuit of Food. She gives workshops from her home and is known to fill her suitcase with flour and teach workshops wherever she is wanted. She assisted in restoring the local grain movement in Southern California (now called the Tehachapi Grain Project) with a heritage seed donation from Anson Mills. Sonoko has taught at the Bread Lab at WSU, University of Colorado’s Grain School in Colorado Springs, and at King Arthur Flour baking schools in Vermont and Seattle. Her cooking videos can be seen on the Food Network and Milk Street... Read more