Horno Community Oven

[gfron1]

A group has approached me about the town installing a horno community oven. They want to know what I think of the idea as the resident foodie. I've never heard of such a thing, nor would I use it...I think. Has anyone seen one or used one? My money is on hummingbirdkiss on this one

[Chris Amirault]

Wow. SW US horno communal ovens seem modeled on many other communal ovens, used by home bakers who haven't access to an oven in their house. As someone who covets a (JW bread professor's) backyard brick oven, I really appreciate the appeal....

So, I googled "horno oven" and found lots of interesting links. Two thoughts occur as I read through them:

1. Size: Most of the contemporary examples I've read about (in these few minutes) have been pretty small indeed, and not quite communal. I'd think that going to scale (esp for any production for your business, Rob) would involve something larger, and not just the smaller ones made for the backyard crowd.

2. Management: It seems that someone (or some group) needs to oversee the use and maintenance of such an oven. I sniff in that the possibility of many committee meetings in which folks look around wondering who's going to devote 10-20 hours a week to the thing.

But, seriously, I think that this is really cool.

[Jaymes]

You might look to some of the old native American communities for ideas. I think that there are still a few of those clay beehive-style communial hornos working in some of the mesas and peublos.

[gfron1]

Thanks guys. I'll be sure to let you know if this project moves forward.

[RAHiggins1]

Thanks guys.  I'll be sure to let you know if this project moves forward.

←

I'm not sure what to call the design, but I know there are plans for building an oven in your backyard in the front sections of "Justin Wilson's Homegrown Louisiana Cookbook".

[Hard H2O]

Didn't they have something like that on Dinner Impossible?

[lemniscate]

I have This Book and *someday* intend to put an earth oven in the backyard. It really doesn't look too hard to do, if you don't mind working with sand and clay. You can actually get quite sculptural with them.

[Jaymes]

I would suggest that sometime you take the 4-hour-drive north to Zuni, NM, and go to the B & L Paywa Bakery.

These folks are still turning out bread and other baked goods (including a wonderful apple pie) in a traditional horno, which they sell to the entire town, plus the occasional tourist that stumbles in. You go right into their house and they're selling the baked goods out of their living room. The day I went, the grownups were around the dining room table having lunch; the kids on the floor watching TV. It's a real homespun kick. And even without the added interest of the bakery, the pueblo of Zuni is extremely interesting to visit and I think you'd enjoy it.

If you go, be sure to stop by the Zuni Tribal Headquarters and ask if you can pay to take a tour that includes the interior of the church. I guarantee you that no matter how much traveling you have done or will do in your life, the interior of that church is something you'll never forget.

And if you're at all interested in southwestern Native American history and culture, you simply should not miss it.

ETA: Here's more info about visiting Zuni Pueblo.

Edited October 31, 2008 by Jaymes (log)

[Soupcon]

We have a few community ovens in Toronto. Here is info about one/two of them:

The two wood ovens are near the basketball courts and the outdoor ice rink, at the northwest corner of the park. They're next to some flower and vegetable gardens that are surrounded by split-rail fences to keep the dogs out. Roses grow over the fence, and beans and squash in season. Sometimes in winter if it's really cold out, skaters come off the ice to stand by the oven nearest the rink, to try and warm themselves. But the ovens are not very warming, because they were designed to channel all their heat into their baking chamber.

Oven schedule

If you want to bake your own bread, you can come after 3p.m. on Thursdays and use the residual heat left from the farmers' market baking. If you want to learn how we bake the bread, you're welcome to come and watch any time on Thursdays between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. You can also get free sourdough starter from us, to take home. But don't try to chat much with the bakers, they need to concentrate on their work. And don't ask about workshops or lessons - there won't be any. It's not a school. But if you want to watch and learn that way, you're welcome.

How they got built

You can see a step-by-step photo gallery of how the oven was built, and get some tips:

When we first put out feelers in 1995 to see if anything would stop us from building a communal wood-fired oven, we found to our amazement that there was nothing to stop us. The building inspector said the oven was too small to come under his jurisdiction. (He also looked at the oven plan diagrams and told us he had once been a bricklayer, and that he thought, personally, that our plans looked good.)

The park supervisor said he didn't see anything wrong with our oven plans, and then he went away on holidays. The fire department said they had no problem with an enclosed fire set some distance away from any other building. A government agency that had given us a small "child nutrition grant" said that fresh bread from an oven sounded nutritious to them, so we could use some of the grant to pay for the oven materials. A friendly and capable contractor in the neighbourhood looked at our plans and said, sure, he was busy in the week but he could get our oven built in a couple of weekends. So with nothing to stop the oven, we went ahead and built it. Our experiences, and suggestions to others, are written down in a booklet called Cooking With Fire in Public Space. You can download a PDF copy of the un-illustrated text by clicking here: Cooking With Fire in Public Space. You can also see a step-by-step photo gallery of how the oven was built, and get some tips:

The plans came from Alan Scott — oven designer and builder, visiting leader of our second oven workshop, desem sourdough baker. Alan's web site is www.ovencrafters.net. You might read The Bread Builders by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott (Chelsea Green, 1999) — a "thoughtful, entertaining, and authoritative book that shows you how to bake superb healthful bread and build your own masonry oven". Also, the brick oven page at the Masonry Heater Association's web site is full of interest.

How we use the ovens

An oven attracts festivals and community events. This only makes sense. People want to share food on special occasions. If we had built substantial stone barbecues instead of an oven, the festivals would still have come. But an oven is more sheltered from the elements, and in winter we can bake bread and make pizza even when it snows.

We don't have to put on the festivals ourselves. People call up and say:

Dinner around the oven

....six folk-dancing groups get together once a year and there are too many people for a small hall -- could they come and dance outdoors and bring a potluck to augment our bread and pizza?

....A theater company has devised an open-air park performance about the mythology surrounding baking in ancient times, could they get us to bake some bread for opening night?

.....A community Hallowe'en parade needs a destination for the parade to end at -- could they end at the park around a giant bonfire, with fresh bread for the participants?

.....The local city councillor's office wants to host an all-neighbourhood lawn sale, could they put it near the oven and have some pizza available?

The smaller events come even more easily. A nursery school wants to do its annual fundraiser, a daycare wants a picnic of all the parents and kids, a street festival will culminate in a pizza-potluck at the park, a group of friends wants to bake unleavened bread before passover, a city parks tour wants to stop and have lunch at the oven. Even birthday parties, if screened, are a kind of community get-together, with familiar faces as friends from school and, often, their parents, gather around the pizza-making table.

And that's not even counting the school classes which want to make pizza at the park, as part of their play day, or part of a lesson on wheat. There used to be weeks in the spring when there were school outings to the Dufferin Park oven twice a day every weekday. (We finally put a halt to having so many: we were turning into a pizza joint, when we're actually a park.) Some of the children who came to those early school visits told us they'd never been to the park before, even if they lived three blocks away. So the oven brought them into the park. They often said they'd come back with their parents, and sometimes they did.

Pizza Oven Sunday Scene

The programs we do offer ourselves around the oven are also proof of the strong desire people have to eat together. Once or twice a week in the summer it's an open oven, when anyone can come and buy a lump of dough and some tomato sauce and cheese, bring their own toppings and make lunch. Often there are seventy or eighty parents and young children coming to make their lunch. Getting your lunch like this takes much longer than ordering a slice from the pizza place up the street. But people tell us speed is not the point. Perhaps they've come to meet their former prenatal class here, all of them now with six-month-old babies, and they're all spread out on three big blankets. Or they've just arranged to meet one friend and spend an afternoon off work in the sunshine, talking and watching the children run around the park. Or they've come on their own, new in the neighbourhood, hoping to meet some of their neighbours.

Any way you look at it, an oven brings people into a park. Build it and they will come.

[gfron1]

Great info. Thank you so much for taking the time to post it.

[tsquare]

And in Seattle, this has happened at Culinary Communion:

"This inaugural Community Bread class is the first in our monthly offering of $10 bread classes for the Beacon Hill community. We'll fire up the brand new brick oven and prepare a few different breads each month. Learn everything from the initial measuring of ingredients and mixing of doughs to proofing and shaping loaves and then baking them in a 700-degree brick oven. You will learn techniques and recipes you can reproduce at home in your own kitchen, but at the same time you'll have the unique experience of the brick oven and meeting fellow foodies from the neighborhood. This kind of baking (and community camaraderie) is a treat - don't miss it!"

But I can't more on the oven on the site:

home page