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Twin Cities Community Ovens

This whole page substantially updated 02/18/2010

The 16th Avenue Pizza Collective

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I received e-mail from Bob Cooper (on 10/09/2008) about one of the brick ovens in the Powerhorn neighborhood. I’m still soliciting answers about it, but I did receive a couple of pictures. The “community” in this case appears to be a group of neighbors who built the oven together.

It’s apparently an Alan Scott design based on the book The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens by Danial Wing and Alan Scott.

Reportedly, its interior is 24 inches by 30 inches.

Other US Community Ovens

There are more people organizing community ovens around the country now. The trick is finding them.

Very few community ovens have their own web sites; some of them are lucky enough to get mentioned in local news that gets put onto the web. If you spot any community ovens, and they are not mentioned here, please point them out to me.

A community oven seems to be made from three elements:

1. A community of people willing and able to share an oven.
2. A place accessible to the community for the oven to be.
3. An oven that can be made available to the community.

The community does not have to be defined by geography, although that is pretty common.

The place does not have to be a public place like a park, although that is common as well. The key is the accessibility. There have been “community ovens” where a business makes an oven available to the community at particular times (when the business is not using it).

The oven can be a simple cob oven or a more complex Quebec-style oven all the way up to a large Alan Scott-style oven.

Different community ovens embody different values for these three elements.

New York State

I have discovered that New York State has become a hotbed of community ovens. There must be a cadre of oven builders and many civic-minded communities able to make this happen. I’m sure I’ve only discovered some of them, because I keep finding more even though most don’t seem to have much information on the web.

Accord, NY

I received e-mail from Charlie Blumstein with pictures of an oven built in Accord, NY. Apparently it was built in 2002-2003. (I don’t yet have permission to use the pictures.) I haven’t been able to find any links relating to this oven.

Albany, NY

This appears to be a small cob oven in a small park.

• hvnb.net – Community
• The Grand Street community bread oven | All Over Albany
• dig your hands in the dirt: The Free School Community bread oven – Peace Oven

Cambridge, NY

This a Quebec-style oven with a coordinated community. Apparently it gets programmed for several events in the community.

• Québécois Bread Oven
• bread-oven Info Page
• Hubbard Hall Times: Classic Films Plus!

Livingston Manor, NY

A farm-based community oven is planned here. It might be more aspirational than definite.

• The Green Effect – Our vision at Wild Roots Farm is to build an outdoor wood-fired community bake oven.
• Wild Roots Farm – Their site hasn’t been updated in half a decade, so it’s not clear how fresh their commitment is to a community oven.

Madison, NY

An arts organization is behind building a cob oven in Madison, NY.

• MAD Art Inc
• News about the project

Carbondale, CO

I have also received e-mail from people in Colorado interested in bread clubs and community ovens there. (Avron Gordon also told me about this.)

One of these efforts is focusing on a community oven for Carbondale, Colorado. They tell me that the Carbondale Community Oven is already “in the works.”

• Community Oven in Colorado | The Fresh Loaf
• Carbondale Community Oven – Home.

These people have drawn inspiration from what’s going in Pittsburgh and in Toronto.

Munising, MI

Another oven that has knitted itself into the community is in a town on the Upper Pennisula of Michigan.

• Bread Oven
• up.net – up.net Event

Norwich, VT

Norwich is the home of King Arthur Flour and therefore a hot-bed of baking, including bread.

• Erasmus the Mudskipper: Community Oven
• Daily Kos: Bread from the Community Oven
• Community Bread Oven on Flickr
• The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship – “We will also bake weekly at the community brick oven in Norwich, Vermont and donate the loaves to the Haven.”
• Any Way You Slice It | The American Scholar – “Sundays at the community oven aren’t just about the pizza”
• norwich – An email discussion forum for Norwich, VT – info

Pittsburgh, PA

Paul Stevens was kind enough to send me two links to articles about community ovens. These were two recent articles from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

• Clarke Thomas: The Mon Valley’s promise – Braddock, North Braddock, Rankin and Swissvale are emphasizing “green development,” including promoting an arts community, launching community food gardens and a community bread oven, and pushing development of the Carrie Furnace site.
• Local baker shaping a bread tradition
• Fired Up: A community oven rises in Braddock
• Polish Hill residents see potential in their neighborhood – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review – A vacant lot on Dobson — the site of a March 2008 fire that destroyed two apartment buildings — is being considered as a location for a community bread oven, Doloughty said. The bread oven would be outdoors and look similar to a brick stove with a pit for building a fire and a shelf for placing bread pans.
• His vision is more community ovens
• Braddock’s Community Oven: A Hot Way to Get People Together

Canadian Community Ovens

I found some mentions of community ovens in Canada. I’m waiting for more information about them.

McDonald’s Corner, Ontario

I found out about this when a blogger’s report was brought to my attention. I was then able to find some other links, including ones with pictures.

• MERA – McDonalds Corners-Elphin Recreation & Arts – The host organization
• MERA unveils wood oven
• Lion Lamb – St. Paul’s United Church: Living Bread
• Wood-fired bake oven, McDonalds Corners, Ontario
• Pizza at the Mcdonalds Corners farmers’ market

Montreal, Quebec

• Montréal – Mention of the Mile End Bread Oven
• Pizza for the masses • Spacing Montreal – An article about the Mile End oven I had filed elsewhere
• URBANPHOTO » The Mystery is Solved – Another article about the Mile End oven I had filed elsewhere

Placentia, Newfoundland

• The Charter: News | To protect, preserve and promote – Placentia, Newfoundland, Community Bread Oven is mentioned with no further details

I now have some pictures, but I haven’t had time to post them here yet. According to e-mail I received, ovens were built around Newfoundland to celebrate the 500 year anniversary of French settlement by French oven builders.

Toronto, Ontario

There is a lot of community oven activity in Toronto, a lot of it around Dufferin Grove Park and other Toronto parks. Here are some other activities.

• Bake Oven – The Betinho Project – Ryerson University – The Betinho Project is being launched by the building of a Community Bake Oven which will be dedicated to Betinho. The Bake Oven will be constructed as part of The Stop Community Food Centre’s Green Barn initiative at the former TTC car barns in the Christie/St. Clair neighbourhood.
• Programs | The Stop Community Food Centre – The Green Barn will host a year round Farmers’ Market and community bake oven.
• Bake Ovens & Markets – While outdoor, wood-burning ovens can be used for anything from bread to casseroles to drying herbs, the most popular use for The Stop’s oven has been weekly do-it-yourself pizza sessions.
• Wychwoodbarnscommunity – Idea Incubator – There has been talk about installing a community bake oven at the Barns

Australian Community Ovens

Albury, New South Wales

This may be the closest to the vision of what I see for a community oven in Saint Paul. The first page details the cost of the oven, the process of building a community interested in the oven, and then talks about how it gets used.

• Breaking bread in the park – A local council used its loaf, spent a little dough, and brought a community together.
• TV chef dishes out hints

The Wood Fired Oven is mentioned as an attraction on their web site, but a direct link is currently broken.

Burnside, Adelaide, South Australia

“That a report be brought to the March Meeting of Council on the costs and possible locations for a community oven(s) to be used by our community for social, cultural and community events in line with the City of Albury’s innovative idea for developing community relationships.”—Council minutes of the Feb. 3, 2010 public meeting.

This is an interesting case of the success of a community oven in one city in Australia (Albury) getting noticed by a different city in a different state of Australia.

Cringila, Wollongong, New South Wales

Cringila Community Park

To paraphrase a document I found on the Wollongong City Council web site (search for “bread oven”):

The product of uniting several different cultures was on display Apr. 26, 2005, when the official opening of a communal bread oven took place at the Cringila Community Park. The bread oven, a traditional part of Eastern European cultures, has been designed and assembled through a Wollongong City Council-supported project involving local residents of Macedonian, Muslim and Indigenous background.

MACEDONIAN, Muslim and Aboriginal communities united at Cringila Park yesterday to unveil a communal bread oven.