Warren Lee Cohen

3 years ago we lived in Stroud where I had the pleasure of working with Gavin Pond. Gavin is a luthier, teacher, musician and all around great guy. 4 months before moving to Canada, I asked Gavin to teach me how to make a guitar. No matter how much he encouraged me to keep it simple, I refused to listen. I was simply too inspired by the beautiful forms he showed me of traditional instruments like citterns, lutes and other guitar precursors . If I was going to take the time and effort to make a guitar, I wanted to make one that was interesting, beautiful and that might hopefully sound ok. I was over ambitious and made just about every mistake possible. Nevertheless, with his guidance, I did manage to complete this instrument in about 2 1/2 years – a sweet little guitar, which I played publicaly for the first time at our summer festival of arts and education.

The woods that we chose for this guitar reflect the geography of my family. The back and sides are of English walnut. The top is made from North American Sitka spruce. The neck is made with a Brazilian mahogany. The little end peg is made with Canadian maple, our latest home. Thanks Gavin!!!

Welcome parents, educators and artists interested in working with the imagination. The Rudolf Steiner Centre Toronto has invited a team of internationally acclaimed artists and educators to offer a diverse selection of practical and artistic workshops. Each explores how the capacity for imagination can be cultivated to serve the arts and education and to enrich our lives. Enrol in one, two, three or four of these week-long workshops and savour your encounter with imagination.

The capacity for imagination is central to advances in all fields of human endeavour. Scientists, artists and educators alike rely upon creative capacities to forge new understanding and build healthy relationships. The cultivation of imagination is fundamental to Waldorf education, in which teachers and students alike are encouraged to perceive living interconnections between seemingly separate things. These reveal that individuals and objects are but a part of a whole meaning-filled world. Imagination lifts the veil of materialism and offers insights into how to work holistically in any endeavour.

Yes, I love to make bread.
I love to combine flour, water, salt and leaven.

I love the alchemy of how earthly substance combines with water; of how air is created by the leavening culture and how at last fire completes the transformation from four simple ingredients into whole loaves.

These are the staff of life.
I like the feel of the dough as I kneed it with my hands, how when I push it, it pushes back against me.

My life meets its life.
We shape one another.

But how, I wonder, am I the bread of life?
In what ways do I nurture the life in myself and in others?

Perhaps it is in those special meetings in which I knead the being of another and equally allow her to knead the essence of me.
I meet you.
You meet me.
Life!

There is a Japanese saying:
Friends eat together from the same bowl.

Let us then companions be.
Let us eat from the same loaf.
Kneading, forming, baking community.

Bake bread. Break it and share it out.

~Warren Lee Cohen

Here are pictures from a August 2010 Bread Oven Building workshop in King City, Ontario. It was a perfect hot and sunny weekend. We had an inspiring crew of 16 participants who were easily able to build two bread ovens in two days. The first oven we built quickly and fired it up the next day to make delicious pizza. We took our time with the second, added a number of details and enjoyed the process of collaborative sculpting.

We began laying our fire bricks on an artistically designed river stone base.

Many feet make easy work of mixing recycled pottery clay,

clay subsoil, sand and straw into homogeneous cob to build the ovens.

We kneaded the cob into loaf size bricks.

We placed the bricks around a form made out of sand.

We built it up like an igloo, molding the bricks tightly together.

We added a second layer of bricks for improved strength and heat retention.

It is essential that all the bricks of both layers are well kneaded together so that there are no air gaps. The structure becomes one monolithic dome.

Artists at work.

The forms were dynamic connecting and influencing one another.

Here is our finished oven complete with its oven spirit.

We removed the door and hollowed out the sand after all the sculpting was complete. This facilitated easy refinement of the doorway of the oven.

Thank you Leslie and Jamie for organizing the event. Enjoy your oven!

No knead bread is a growing fad that gives more people entree into the art of baking bread. There are a number of very good videos describing the process on youtube . I find this idea both interesting and at the same time far from compelling. I simply love to have my hands in the dough, to feel its sticky sloppiness transform into soft elasticity as all the ingredients meet one another and come together into a lively dough. Kahlil Gibran wrote that work is love made visible.  So too is bread love made visible.

So, I choose to knead my bread dough (all except for sour rye which is happy with a vigorous stir). It is good exercise and meaningfilled and the results are more pleasing in terms of crust and crumb. Nevertheless, from these video clips  I have learned to bake my slowly risen loaves in a well heated cast iron pot with lid. This simple technique produces crusts that rival those of my best bread ovens.

1. shape mature dough into large loaf  (18 to 36 hour preliminary and 2 to 3 hour final rise – depending on temperature of the house)
2. place cast iron pot and lid in oven at 500 F.
3. using well floured hands transfer loaf into pot
4. cover and put in oven for 20 minutes
5. uncover pot and lower oven temperature to 400 F.
6. bake for 15 to 20 minutes
7. let cool and admire remarkably beautiful crust

Is this bread really food or is it the clever brain child of a chemistry lab?

Whole grain white bread???

Look at the ingredient label below.

In what bread recipe that you know is their more water than flour (usually it is 2 to 1, flour to water)?
Since when is Cottonseed fiber a food?
High fructose corn syrup is not a food!
Neither is soy fiber!
And then there is the whole list of other unpronouncable goodies…

Ingredients:  WATER, WHEAT FLOUR, COTTONSEED FIBER, WHEAT GLUTEN, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP OR SUGAR, YEAST. CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: CALCIUM CARBONATE, SALT, BARLEY MALT, VINEGAR, NATURAL FLAVOR, CALCIUM PROPIONATE (TO RETAIN FRESHNESS), SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, CELLULOSE GUM, SOY FIBER, ETHOXYLATED MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, MONOCALCIUM PHOSPHATE, SOYBEAN OIL, SOY LECITHIN, YEAST EXTRACT, B VITAMINS (NIACIN, THIAMINE MONONITRATE (B1), RIBOFLAVIN (B2), PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (B6), FOLIC ACID, VITAMIN B12), CALCIUM SULFATE, FERROUS SULFATE (IRON), CALCIUM DIOXIDE, VITAMIN D3, VITAMIN E ACETATE, ZINC OXIDE, AZODICARBONAMIDE, ENZYMES, SOY FLOUR, STEVIA EXTRACT (NATURAL SWEETENER), WHEY.

Why choose this when all it takes to make nutritious bread is flour, water, salt and leaven?

Keep on baking!

A dead mouse was embedded into the bread and already sliced.
Ready to eat?!

Premier Foods was ordered to pay nearly £17,000 in fines and redress after a man found a dead mouse in a loaf of bread as he made sandwiches for his children. A more worrying detail was that the tail was missing and presumably eaten for lunch the day before.  For full article click here

Come explore the art of baking bread using whole grains and natural leaven, sourdough starter. We’ll bake a variety of breads using the same simple sourdough culture. We’ll touch upon the aspects of baking that create healthy and nutritious bread and, of equal importance that allow for joy and meaning in the baking process. You’ll learn how to make and use your own sourdough culture. You’ll take home fresh baked bread, sourdough starter and inspiration for future baking.

Toronto Waldorf School
Kitchen (downstairs)
Sunday September 26, 2010
10:00 am to 4:00 pm

Course fee $75 (includes all ingredients, bread and starter to take home)

To register please contact Rudolf Steiner Centre Toronto
Tel. 905 764 7570
info@rsct.ca

Build two bread ovens with experienced oven builder, Warren Lee Cohen. Made from recycled clay, sand and straw, these hand (and feet!) sculpted ovens are kneaded right into shape and then allowed to harden.

We will fire one of them and use it to make organic sourdough pizza on the Sunday. Please bring your favourite topping and an apron.

Many participants from past workshops have gone on to build their own bread ovens.

King City, Ontario
Saturday August 28 and
Sunday August 29, 2010
10:00 am to 4:00 pm

Course fee $125 (includes lunch both days
and all materials)

To register please contact Leslie
Tel. 905 833 3533
leslie.peel@mac.com