ASU hires James Beard baker

Arizona State University has named Tucson baker Don Guerra its first baker in residence for the coming year. (newsroom.asu.edu) Guerra, the owner of Barrio Bread, will join the School of Transborder Studies under a new residency that grows out of the school’s earlier artist in residence program. (newsroom.asu.edu) Arizona State University said Guerra’s work will connect food, culture and community, with programming tied to the school’s focus on borderlands life and exchange. (newsroom.asu.edu) The appointment puts breadmaking inside an academic unit that studies migration, identity and the U.S.-Mexico border, not a culinary school. Arizona State University framed the residency as a way to treat food as a form of cultural knowledge. (news.asu.edu) Guerra is best known for building Barrio Bread around grains grown in the Sonoran Desert region and for working with local farmers and millers in southern Arizona. Arizona State University said that local grain network is central to why he was chosen. (news.asu.edu) He already has one of the food world’s biggest awards. The James Beard Foundation’s awards program says the honors recognize achievement in culinary arts, hospitality and the broader food system. (jamesbeard.org) The foundation’s past winners records list Guerra as the 2022 Outstanding Baker winner. (jamesbeard.org) Arizona State University said Guerra’s residency will include public-facing work and student engagement, extending the school’s practice of bringing working artists and cultural figures onto campus. (newsroom.asu.edu; news.asu.edu) The move also gives the university a high-profile local name at a time when colleges are broadening humanities programming beyond lectures and galleries to include food, labor and everyday community practices. Arizona State University’s description of the role leans on those ideas rather than restaurant training. (news.asu.edu) For Guerra, the job brings the same loaf that made his name into a new setting: a public university classroom where bread is being used to talk about place, history and belonging. (news.asu.edu)