The Friday evening Preview was a wash-out — a squall came through with strong winds, hail, and torrential rains!! But through it all, the judges at the New England Rhubarb Wine Contest sipped and considered. They liked the Rhubarb Blush from Putney Mountain Winery in Vermont the best.
Saturday was cool and happily rain-free. The contest tent was full of long stalks and wide leaves, along with art work and flower arrangements.
The field was full of vendors and non-profit information booths. In the Drink Your Rhubarb tent, three ladies of Hartwick College sipped Rhubarb beverages contentedly. A good time was had by all.
The G.E.P. Dodge Library sold books and baked goods to inch us closer to renovations.
See you on the first weekend of June in 2024.
This is the blog of the Bennington Rhubarb Festival, started in 2013 to benefit the G.E.P. Dodge Library Building Fund.
If you would like to help the Building Fund, please contribute any amount to the G.E.P. Dodge Library Building Fund, Bennington, NH 03442.
The next blog installment will be posted on June 6, 2023. If you click the Follow button, all future posts will be sent straight to your inbox every month.
Two of the hottest topics at the Bennington, New Hampshire Rhubarb Festival are: where can I buy a pie? and who won the Rhubarb Pie baking contest? Rhubarb pie has been baked in England and the USA since the 1700s.
If you want to enter the Pie Baking Contest at the Bennington Rhubarb Festival, you should know how to make a pie. Here is a tutorial. But be aware: although the recipe is really quite simple, there are controversies at each stage of preparation.
In 2018, the Town Select Board turned out to judge the rhubarb pies. They were very serious about the job.
Crust: Lard or butter? Oil or shortening? Which fat to choose to make a flakey crust is a perennial debate. There is no hard and fast rule on this. Find a good recipe for a butter crust or a lard crust or a combination of the two. NOTE: for the Rhubarb Festival Pie Contest, you must prepare the crust with some sort of King Arthur Flour, and prove it by showing the bag that contained the flour.
Sugar: How much? To consult some well-known New England experts, Fannie Farmer’s Cookbook uses less sugar than Hayden Pearson in his Country Flavor’s Cookbook. My mother used so much sugar in her pie, that there was a layer of it on the bottom crust. Too much sugar negates the delightful tartness of rhubarb.
Thickener:Flour? Tapioca? Corn starch? Many, many opinions on this topic! Rhubarb is so juicy that it requires something to sop up the liquid. Read the link provided, and make up your own mind.
Egg: yes or no? Fannie Farmer says ‘yes.’ Hayden Pearson says ‘never.’ One egg helps to firm up the innards of the pie. Two eggs make it a custard.
Topping: Lattice or top crust or crumble? Full top crust is familiar. Lattice makes it look special. Crumble top is easy, though some say that is reserved for an apple pie.
From the Fannie Farmer CookbookFrom Pearson’s Country Flavor Cookbook
Here is my recipe, for what it is worth…
Serves 6-8
9” pie plate
dough for 1-2 pie crusts
Prepare dough. Roll out half and line pie plate.
4½ cups rhubarb
Cut in ½” slices and put in a large bowl.
1 cup sugar— 2 Tbsp King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour –1 two-oz egg
Add these all to rhubarb and stir well to incorporate all ingredients and to coat the rhubarb evenly. Scrape into lined pie plate.
Topping 1: Pie dough for 1 crust
Wet the edges of the bottom crust with water. Roll out into a large circle and lay it over the pie. Trim edges, then crimp the crusts together decoratively.
Topping 2: Pie dough for 1 crust
Roll out into a large rectangle and cut long strips, each ½’ wide. Lay strips over the pie and weave them over-and-under to form a lattice top.
Topping 3: ½ c rolled oats— ¼ c flour— ½ c brown sugar — ¼ tsp cinnamon —5 Tbsp butter
Put these in a food processor and pulse until they form crumbs. Scatter a healthy amount atop the pie. You may have some left over for another pie.
Heat oven to 400F. Bake pie 15 minutes. Turn heat down to 350F and bake 30 minutes until bubbling in the center. Cover with foil if browning too rapidly.
There are two categories in the Pie Contest at the Bennington Rhubarb Festival.
Section
Description
Prizes
1.King Arthur Baking Contest
Pie: > 100% rhubarb – no other fruits added >7-9” in diameter, >1 or 2 crust > in disposable pan > must show the opened bag of King Arthur Flour used to make the pie or show the UPC cut from the bag. > open to amateur bakers of all ages.
1st $75 gift card for King Arthur catalogue + Ribbon 2nd $50 catalogue gift card + Ribbon 3rd $25 catalogue gift card + Ribbon
2. Professional Baking Contest
>100% Rhubarb Pie any size >1 or 2 crust in disposable pan > open to bakers from restaurants and bakeries
1st Prize Rolling Pin
This is the blog of the Bennington Rhubarb Festival, started in 2013 to benefit the G.E.P. Dodge Library Building Fund.
If you would like to help the Building Fund, please contribute any amount to the G.E.P. Dodge Library Building Fund, Bennington, NH 03442.
The next blog installment will be posted on June 6. If you click the Follow button, all future posts will be sent straight to your inbox every month.
As the snow melts from the Rhubarb Patch, I watch eagerly to see when the Rhubarb will begin to peek up from the ground. This year, the first I saw it was Friday, April 7.
This photo was taken six days later. In the center, the typically red bud. Next to each bud, a crinkly green leaf, preparing to unfurl. Soon it will be time to dig up parts of the clumps, to give the remaining crowns more space to grow. The roots and shoots that are removed will be sold at Bennington’s G.E. P. Dodge Library to benefit the Building Fund.
Can the first pie be far off? How is your Rhubarb doing?
If you would like to help the Building Fund, please contribute any amount to the G.E.P. Dodge Library Building Fund.
The next installment will be posted on May 9. If you click the Follow button, all future posts will be sent straight to your inbox every month.
Every year at the Rhubarb Festival, we are asked, “Just what is Rhubarb?” So if that is where you are starting, you have come to the right place.
Rhubarb is a very hardy perennial plant, so tenacious that it will survive from growth zone 8 to zone 3. It is part of the Buckwheat Family [Polygonaceae] of plants, the cousin of sheep sorrel and curly dock [Rumex crispus]. Garden rhubarb in the United States is Rheum rhabarbarum, one of dozens of varieties within that Genus. The roots are long, woody, and look somewhat like huge carrots. They are referred to as ‘crowns.’ Around here, the Rhubarb starts to come up in April: a red, bud-like knob of curled leaf, crowning through the soil. Then come the stalks, pushing the leaves higher into the air. The stalks can be three feet tall, colored red or green. The leaf is heart-shaped and very wide. At this point, the stems can be harvested for eating. [What can one cook with rhubarb? Several future blogs will address that, recipes included.] Please note: although those leaves look good enough to eat, they contain high amounts of the toxin Oxalic Acid. DO NOT EAT THE LEAVES.
From the first pink buds pushing up, to the full leaf unfurling, it is a treat to watch the changes as the Rhubarb grows. photos from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
By June, the flower stalks rise high above the leaves, carrying bunches of tiny, frothy flowers looking like cumulus clouds. Gardeners in the know are aware that these stalks must be cut down. If a Rhubarb plant blooms, then the stalks become too tough and woody to eat. This has lead to the erroneous notion that Rhubarb is available only in the Spring. No so. If you cut down the flower stalks, you can harvest the stems until September.
At the Bennington New Hampshire Rhubarb Festival, there are contests for ‘Longest Stalk’ and ‘Widest Leaf,’ as well as ‘Rhubarb Photography’ and ‘Rhubarb Flower Arrangement.’
Rhubarb stalks come in many colors, which has no affect on the flavor or tartness.Rhubarb flowers can make a nice arrangement.
The next installment will be posted on May 9. If you click the Follow button, all future posts will be sent straight to your inbox every month.
In 2013, neighbors Janice and Molly decided to start a rhubarb celebration. Why? you might ask. They were looking for a fund-raising activity to benefit the town library’s building fund, and they thought that it was high time that there was a town fest of some sort. Rhubarb is the ‘first fruit of the season’ and by early June, the plant is up and thriving in gardens all over the region. No other town in the area had a Rhubarb Festival, so it had to be Rhubarb! After much planning, they held a bake sale on the Library Lawn in early June. The next year, a baking contest, a face-painter, craft sellers, a children’s Fun Run, and a basket raffle joined the bake sale. By 2020, the Town’s Recreation Committee was involved in the planning, but there was no Festival that year at all due to the Pandemic.
Busy Bake Table on the Library Lawn.Rhubarb Pies await the Judging.All sorts of fun at the Rhubarb Festival.
Resuming in 2021, the Festival had moved from the Library Lawn to a town ball-field to give us more room. Events began on Friday evening with live music, food trucks, and contest entries being delivered. Many more crafters, a petting-zoo, the Rhubarb Store, a Hollerin’ Contest, and Drink Your Rhubarb made the Festival larger and even more fun. The King Arthur Flour company sponsored the Pie Baking Contest — Rhubarb of course — and money was raised for the Library Building Fund from the sale of baked goods and books.
The Festival is still going strong and is always held on the first weekend of June, on Saturday, beginning at 10 am. This year will be our 10th anniversary. Plan to join us at Sawyer Park, Bennington, NH. If you would like to help out, please send your contact info to Rhubarb Committee, c/o G.E.P. Dodge Library . If you would like to help the Building Fund, please contribute any amount to the G.E.P. Dodge Library Building Fund.
The next installment will be posted on April 11. If you click the Follow button, all future posts will be sent straight to your inbox every month.
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