By Brooke Haas, Kansas Wheat Communications Intern

Do you love to bake, or just love bread in general? Would you like to hone your baking and barbecue skills? Looking for a fun activity for the kids on a summer Saturday? Then the National Festival of Breads is just the event for you.

This fun, family-friendly festival will be held on Saturday, June 17, 2017, at the Hilton Garden Inn, 410 South 3rd Street, Manhattan, Kansas. Additional events will be held across the blocked-off street at the Blue Earth Plaza.

Admission is free with the donation of a canned or nonperishable food item. These donations will be given to the Flint Hills Breadbasket.

To start the day off, there is an Enrich Your Life 5K at 7:30 a.m., and at 8:15 a.m. the 1 mile fun run begins. The Festival opens to the public at 8:30 a.m., and bread-baking contestants will begin preparing their winning bread recipes. The eight finalists for National Festival of Breads were chosen from entries that came from all across the United States.

Baking demonstrations will be going on throughout the day, beginning at 8:30 a.m. Torie Cox, food stylist with Time Inc., will demonstrate her “Cinnamon Swirl Brioche Loaf” all done by hand! Cookbook author and physician Jeff Hertzberg will present his “The New Artisan Bread In Five Minutes a Day: Mixing dough for refrigerator storage and basic loaf shaping” at 9:30 a.m. Hertzberg will show us how to mix basic doughs and shaping techniques. At 10:30 a.m., Paula Gray, Manager for Bake for Goods Kids Program, will demonstrate her “Bake for Good: Get Rolling with King Arthur Flour!” She will also show us some basic yeast dough tips and how to shape dinner rolls. Jeff Hertzberg will give a second presentation at 12:30 p.m., titled “Artisan Pizza and Flatbread In Five Minutes a Day: Pizza and flatbreads, the fastest breads In the world.” He will demonstrate the versatility of the flatbread. At 1:30 p.m., Sharon Davis, Family & Consumer Sciences educator with the Home Baking Association, will demonstrate her “Be a Smart Snack Baker!” She will teach us how to be healthy smart snackers.

From bread to barbecue, the Festival has it all. In the barbecue tent, Rod Gray of Pellet Envy, will demonstrate how he cooks his delicious barbecue that he pours his heart and soul into. He will give three presentations, at 10:00 a.m., noon and 2:00 p.m.

In between barbecue demonstrations, the Festival boasts live music from the Past Blasters.

Other events that the Festival of Breads has to offer are wheat weaving demonstrations, bread samples, trade show of vendors, Mr. and Mrs. Slice, a kids’ area that will have hands-on pancake making, and demonstrations from the Backyard Kitchen.

The Festival wraps up at 3:00 p.m., when the finalists deliver their winning breads to the judges. An announcement of the National Festival of Breads Champion will be made later in the evening via the website, nationalfestivalofbreads.com and Facebook pages (@nationalfestivalofbreads).

So come on out and join us at the Hilton Garden Inn, 410 South 3rd Street, Manhattan, Kansas for fresh bread, barbecue, demonstrations, live music and much, much more! We hope to see you at the National Festival of Breads. We’re positive you’ll love it.