Bread ovens
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!
Anita’s bread oven, Nailsworth, UK
Emerson College, West Sussex, UK
My first two bread ovens were built at the Olympia Waldorf School with children (and parents) in class 3. We built a whole bakery in fact in the kindergarten playground for the children to fire their imaginative play when the oven was not being stoked. Perhaps I will find some photographs…
I built my next bread oven with 10 Foundation Year Programme students at Emerson College in Sussex, England. We designed and built the oven, roof and patio in the winter which proved quite a challenge for our Ugandan students who had difficult time keeping warm in the process of playing with cob (clay subsoil, sand and straw) in the damp English winter. nevertheless, it was a fabulous creative process and led to many Art of Baking Bread workshops at Emerson, pizza parties and still serves the community at Emerson to this day.
Wynstones School, Gloucestershire, UK
Hereford School, Herefordshire, UK
Olympia, Washington, US
I used to have a lovely country home in Olympia Washington where I built a 6 loaf bread oven under two large fir trees. The oven blended in well in the transition between house and garden and added a lovely element of whimsy to the yard. This oven was crafted with the help of my house mates Elinor and Wes with assistance from Ruth Peterson’s third grade at the Olympia Waldorf School. I baked in this oven weekly and invited many friends to join in for pizza festivals.