The most prestigious gathering of the artisan baking sector in Hungary, the 10th anniversary Kenyérlelke (Bread’s Soul) Festival, was held on 20 August in Budajenő, where ÖMKi participated as an exhibitor as well as in the professional programme.

We have been a regular exhibitor and participant in this festival with a special spirit and tradition since its launch. We are proud to say that we have long-standing partnerships with many exhibiting bakers and organisations, making the festival an important professional meeting point for us. It also provides a unique opportunity to introduce ourselves to people beyond the professional community who are interested in clean and quality food. Because the greatest joy of our work is when our research results are put into practice, it is important to spread the word about ancient cereals, thus increasing the openness to domestic and organic products, improving supply and demand.

On the stage, professional panel discussions took place throughout the day, where in the afternoon, our research colleague Fruzsina Szira participated in a discussion entitled ’Treasures of our Natural Land’ and talked about the ancient cereals research work of ÖMKi.

At our stand, we presented our ancient cereals product map, which shows where you can find bakeries, mills and farms in Hungary where you can buy high quality einkorn, emmer and spelt flour, bread or pasta.

During a bread tasting session visitors had to guess whether they were eating einkorn or emmer bread by tasting them. (The breads were baked by József Cseperkáló (Panelpék) from the einkorn and emmer flour of our on-farm partners Antal Biofarm and Gabriella Kocsis). The tasting and the exhibited grain ears helped to introduce ancient wheats to a wider audience.

At the festival, the artisan bakers presented a very wide range of products, which we were able to uniquely diversify with einkorn and emmer. There was a huge interest, it was good to see that there is a demand for a diversity of grains and that we can support this with our research.