Georgia takes its peaches seriously. Early each summer, Georgia’s Peach County turns into a full-on festival. For nearly 40 years, the community of Fort Valley and Byron has been celebrating the region’s peach harvest with the Georgia Peach Festival. The annual gathering takes place over two weekends, but the whole week feels like Christmas morning for Georgians. Aside from honoring the state’s peach growers with peach-centric everything, the festival features parades, live music, fair rides, endless food options, and handcraft vendors. As fun-packed as the Georgia Peach Festival may be, the best part has to be the gigantic trough of peach cobbler, the world’s largest peach cobbler at that.
As if the festival didn’t offer enough fun and games for the crowd, local information systems manager Rich Bennett and his baking team have carried on the tradition of staying up all night to create a peach cobbler large enough to feed the masses. The record-breaking cobbler fills an eleven-by-five-foot vat that stands eight inches deep, but the size isn’t even the best part. It’s not only delicious but also free to all attendees. Canned or frozen peaches get the job done off-season, but you’ll only find fresh peaches in this cobbler.
This ginormous peach cobbler requires a canoe paddle for stirring
The monumental peach cobbler is arguably the most beloved part of the festival, with folks lining up as soon as the aroma of fresh peaches hits their nose. Classic peach cobbler is a fairly simple recipe that generally takes less than an hour to prepare, but not when you’re working with 75 gallons of peaches picked from the very best varieties out there. Bennett’s version incorporates 90 pounds of butter, 32 gallons of milk, and 150 pounds of sugar and flour, guaranteeing there’s enough cobbler for everyone. Georgia, so accurately nicknamed the Peach State, produces some of the sweetest, most exceptional peaches in the world. It’s no wonder the Georgia Peach Festival has been honoring them annually since 1986.
Before Bennett took over around 2007, a Peach County commissioner handled the daunting responsibility. Despite Bennett’s baking talents, it wasn’t an easy job to secure. Before officially taking over as the peach cobbler master, he had to complete a one-year apprenticeship with his predecessor. Given the jaw-dropping size, the baking process took time to master and a lot of handcrafted apparatuses. The innovative bakers use bus floor panels as a makeshift baking pan, which is then lowered into a custom-built brick oven that sits right in the Peach County Courthouse parking lot. This cobbler is certainly a big deal.
