bread loaf

Saint Paul Bread Club

We knead to bake!

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Location: Quest for Ovens / Business
 

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Business Ovens in Minnesota and Nearby

A-to-Z Produce

Stockholm, Wisconsin

Original A-to-Z Produce Brick Oven

The original oven in 2004.

Both A-to-Z Produce Brick Ovens

The pair of ovens in 2010.

A-to-Z now has a pair of ovens based on Alan Scott’s design. (The new oven is on the right in this picture.)

According to one Stockholm resident, on a busy summer night, they turn out 300 pizzas.

They only make pizzas on Tuesday nights. When it gets cold, they will stop making pizza and resume making pizza “sometime in the spring.”

The Bread Club went there on a field trip in 2004. At Wednesday noon the oven has cooled enough so that it can be used to bake bread.

Sometime recently they created their own web site.

They do have their own Facebook page.

There is also a section on links relating specfically to them on the Businesses Links page.

A-to-Z Produce and Bakery Quest for Ovens Blog Post

Big River Pizza

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Big River Pizza oven and tesnt

Big River Pizza oven and tent.

The Big River Pizza says this on their home page:

We are more than just a pizza wagon, pizza truck, pizza caterer, pizza delivery, wood fired pizza oven or brick oven. We are Minnesota’s premier mobile wood fired catering business operating out of the Twin Cities and 7 county metro area.

I have not had any of the pizza, but it sure looks good.

Brick Oven Bakery

630 Professional Drive, Northfield, Minnesota 55057, 507-645-9517

Brick Oven Bakery's Oven

The Brick Oven Bakery was the destination for an SPBC field trip. People along for the trip heard how the oven was originally fired with wood, but because of the lack of convenience it was converted to electric heat. It is still a retained heat oven, but the heat comes from electricity instead of burning wood.

Subsequent communications revealed that it is an Alan Scott design with a hearth size of 56 inches by 72 inches (almost 5 feet by 6 feet) built in 1996.

Bricks Neapolitan Pizza

Hudson, Wisconsin

Bricks oven

Bricks oven

My wife and I took a day trip that included a visit to Bricks Neapolitan Pizza in Hudson, Wisconsin. It was relatively easy to find (on the main drag through town).

We both liked the pizzas we individually ordered.

Firebrick Bread

near Zumbrota, Minnesota

Firebrick Bread's oven

Firebrick Bread's oven door

Firebrick Bread’s oven and oven doorway.

I became aware of Stephan Jennebach’s oven through the Yahoo Brick Oven group.

He has a web site and a YouTube video.

From what I have read and seen (on the video) he knows is stuff.

Nelson Stone Barn

Nelson, Wisconsin

The Nelson Stone Barn is open seasonally (early April to early October).

According to the man behind the bar that I talked to, they make between 40 and 100 pizzas a night.

According to their web site: “Hours to the general public: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 5pm - 9pm.” So, they are open more days, but fewer months, than A-to-Z Produce.

QfO Blog Post

Round Barn Farm Bed and Breakfast

Red Wing, Minnesota

Round Barn Farm Brick Oven

The Round Barn Farm Bed & Breakfast & Bread in Red Wing, Minnesota has a brick oven.

The oven is built into the oldest structure on the farm, a smoke house. It is easily big enough to hold a half-dozen artisan loaves of bread.

According to what I was told when my wife and I stayed there, their health department inspector requires that only guests in the B&B&B bake in the oven.

Urban Garden Pizza Experience

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Urban Garden Pizza Experience Sign Urban Garden Pizza Experience Wood-Fired Oven Urban Garden Pizza Experience Wood-Fired Oven closeup

I got a “field report” from Terry Savoie about an oven near the Minneapolis Farmers’ Market. I went to check it out. I found a built-up patio area near the southeast corner of the market.

There does appear to be a wood-burning oven used to make pizza. It seems to be a concrete barrel vault (approximately a half-cylinder), with a flue near the front just at the top of the curve. It’s not what I would consider to be a good oven design, but apparently it works. It does not appear to be efficient.

The fact that the front of the oven is so black tells me that the flue is too small, so lots of combustion gases go out the front instead. Maybe I’m wrong.

There were ashes in the oven, so it must have been used. There was no indication of hours of operation or how it was all supposed to work. A Google search for “Urban Garden Pizza Experience” didn’t show any relevant information.

Vineyard Bistro

Red Wing, Minnesota

Vineyard Bistro oven 1 Vineyard Bistro oven 2

My wife and I visited the Vineyard Bistro (on July 1, 2011) and had a nice chat with Potter John and his wife Ann, owners of Falconer Vineyards

John told me how he had worked at a pizza place much earlier in his life and then later in life was a potter and kiln builder.

If I remember the dates correctly, he started the vineyard in about 2003.

In 2010 John built an oven for pizza and started the Vineyard Bistro .

The bistro is a covered terrace overlooking the bowl of the valley with growing grape vines and wildlife.

The pizzas we had seemed well executed. They have a gluten-free pizza crust available as well as their standard pizza crust, which has some whole wheat flour in it.

(Original Quest for Ovens blog post )

Other Businesses Nearby

There are other businesses that we believe have brick ovens, but we don’t have pictures of their ovens.

Minnesota

Not all of these businesses are regular restaurants where you can just visit during something like normal business hours.

Some of them are mobile oven businesses, and others are even more irregular than that.

Minnesota Mobile Oven Businesses

Minnesota Farms and Vineyards

Wisconsin

Businesses with fixed locations

  • AtoZ Produce and Bakery N2956 Anker Lane, Stockholm, WI, 54769, The original Pizza Farm, serving only Tuesdays 4:30-8pm QfO Blog Post (news item)
  • Bohemian Ovens 905 Martin Road, Bloomer, WI, 54724, Bohemian Ovens is an authentic brick oven bakery owned and operated by Mike and Sally Hable.
  • Bricks Neapolitan Pizza 407 Second St., Hudson, WI, 54016, VPN-Certified Pizza
  • Cafe Porta Alba 558 N. Midvale Blvd., Madison, WI, 53705, VPN-Certified Pizza QfO Blog Post
  • Cress Spring Bakery 4035 Ryan Road, Blue Mounds, WI, 53517, traditional methods to create whole grain, wood-fired, naturally leavened, baked breads and pastries
  • DaLou’s Bistro 310 West Bayfield Street, Washburn, WI, 54891, home-made pizzasusing only the freshest available ingredients and baked in our wood-fired pizza oven imported from Italy
  • Hegg Store W11982 County Road C, Ettrick, WI, 54627, American food made with a wood-fired oven QfO Blog Post
  • Hellfire Pizza W12166 820th Ave., River Falls, WI, 54022, serving only some Saturday afternoons - call ahead 715-425-9781
  • Il Ritrovo Pizza 515 S. 8th St., Sheboygan, WI, 53081, A completely wood-fired Neopolitan-styled pizzeria and wine bar with full Italian deli and retail shop
  • Lombardino’s 2500 University Ave., Madison, WI, 53705, Lombardino’s is a friendly neighborhood restaurant where the atmosphere is casual and the staff is welcoming and attentive QfO Blog Post
  • LoveTree Farmstead, aka Pizza by the Pond 12413 County Road Z, Grantsburg, WI, 54840, Our wood-fired pizzas include organic homegrown veggies, herbs, meat, and Cave Aged Cheese photos by Kathy Lewinski story QfO Blog Post
  • New Glarus Brewing Company 2400 State Highway 69, New Glarus, WI, 53574, pizza by a mobile wood-fired oven caterer review
  • Pizza Brutta 1805 Monroe St., Madison, WI, 53711, Neapolitan pizza with Wisconsin moz. and Italian tomatoes QfO Blog Post
  • Red Horse Bakery N7659 950th St., River Falls, WI, 54022, wood-fired, but not a retail outlet
  • Restaurant Saveur 8041 Hwy 57, Baileys Harbor, WI, 54202, Exquisite wood fired cuisine with south american/french flavors
  • Stone Barn S685 County Road KK, Nelson, WI, 54756, We offer a variety of authentic extra thin crust Italian pizzas baked in our wood-fired brick oven QfO Blog Post
  • Suncrest Gardens Farm S2257 Yaeger Valley Road, Cochrane, WI, 54622, only open limited times–check site for hours and days QfO Blog Post
  • Third Street Deli 1015 Third Street, Pepin, WI, 54759, Real good real food…. boutique or bistro style food. Fresh choices made daily QfO Blog Post (news item)

Mobile Businesses

Wisconsin Wood-Fired Oven Businesses on a Map

revised map in preparation

Other Businesses of Interest

Eve MacLeish’s Brick Oven

Merida, Venezuela

Eve MacLeish's Brick Oven

Eve has an oven, but not in this country. She uses it as part of a commercial bakery.

Round Hill House and Bowe Cabin

Durand, Wisconsin

Round Hill House and Bowe Cabin on the Chippewa River, near Durand, Wisconsin is unusual in that it has a wood-fired oven that can be used by people who rent the property.

The oven appears to be an Alan Scott barrel-vault oven. (It seems to be near the Bowe Cabin.)

The information on the web page does not mention the oven, but a Google search for “Round Hill brick oven Durand” will return several mentions of it. It seems to date from 2008 or earlier.

Pizza Farms

Some of the popular internet searches that find some of my pages are

  • brick oven pizza farm wisconsin
  • western wi pizza
  • western wisconsin pizza farms
  • wisconsin pizza farms

Partly this was driven by the cover story in the June, 2011 issue of Midwest Living magazine, the first part of which can be found here

There was an even more brief article in the National Geographic Traveler, June/July, 2013, on page 24. The headline of the article (which appeared on the cover), was “Midwest pizza farms.” However, it only mentioned pizza farms in western Wisconsin. It briefly mentioned A-to-Z, the Nelson Stone Barn, and Suncrest Gardens.

There have been some items of pizza farm news that have been broadcast on the radio and then found their way on-line:

Just to focus on “pizza farms”, here again are the appropriate links.

These and some other “pizza farms” can be found on my Quest for Ovens blog under the label farm.