Quest for Ovens: July 2011

Purpose of this blog

This blog will really be a true web log. I will post here about different wood-fired ovens as I find them.

If you know of any wood-fired ovens I should know about, you can send an e-mail to me. (If you build wood-fired ovens, I would like to hear from you too.)

There will lots of posts and lots of labels, since I plan to create one post for every appropriate web site that I find, and however many labels it takes to describe each one (usually at least the type of page and the location of the oven).

The accumulated information will still be found at the real Quest for Ovens web site links pages, but that is not updated as frequently as this blog will be.

If you are from outside the US and Canada, let me know what you find interesting about it. I see that I get visitors from India and Iran, and other faraway places. I'd like to know what draws you to this blog.

I received e-mail from the organizers of the BBC Two television show asking if the Saint Paul Bread Club could post a notice about their show Great British Bake-Off for amateur bakers. The information they gave me is now accessible through a link. (The organizers don't have a web page for the show itself yet.)

Please share this with any amateur bakers in Great Britain you may know, or post the link where they might see it.

Thanks.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Mobile Wood-fired Pizza Catering Twin Cities

I'm adding this post because it's a common search term, and I thought I would prepare an answer for it.
(Updated 6/8/2012)

I have identified mobile wood-fired pizza catering businesses in (and near) the Twin Cities that make the effort to be easily found. All of these are (or will be) listed on my Business Ovens page (local to Minnesota and Wisconsin) and on my Mobile Oven page in the Mobile Oven Businesses section (which is worldwide).

Big River Pizza
Olive Pizza (added 9/26/2011)
Pizza Festa di Viaggio (permanently relocated to Nashville, TN; sorry)
Red Wagon Pizza Company (added 07/09/2012)
Russell Glover Farm (River Falls, WI, but also serving the Twin Cities)
Thyme to Entertain
Wandering Fire (St. Croix Falls, WI, added 6/8/2012)

I have not used any of these businesses. I don't know how much they charge.

If you find similar businesses in Minnesota (or elsewhere), leave me a comment, and I will add them to my link collection.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Maine Grain Alliance, Skowhegan, Maine

I discovered the Facebook Farming/Agriculture page for the Maine Grain Alliance. Their info page says in part:

Maine Grain Alliance organizes the Kneading Conference, an annual event that brings together home and professional bakers, millers, wheat breeders, farmers, eaters, wood-fired oven builders, and food entrepreneurs and writers for two days of hands-on workshops, panel discussions and lectures.

The Kneading Conference has its own site.

I haven't been to any of the conferences myself, but what I have seen (on YouTube and other places) makes me wish I could go there.

Third Street Deli, Pepin, Wisconsin

People in one of my oven-building classes had told me that there was a new wood-fired oven business in Pepin, Wisconsin.

An article in the 7/7/11 Taste section of the StarTribune says in part:

As if Judith Hanks weren't busy enough, what with cooking jumbo breakfasts and lunches at her Third Street Deli along with running an adjacent consignment shop and day spa. No, Hanks recently dove headlong into the outdoor pizza business, and it's a gas.

They have a Facebook Restaurant/Cafe page.

The next time I roll through Pepin at the right time, I'm stopping for pizza.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Nevada City Community Oven, Nevada City, California

Sometimes there are only a few clues, sometimes more.

There was a Wordpress blog, which disappeared. I did later find a replacement blog post that mentioned a community oven in Nevada City, California.

The post says in part:

The Bluebird Farm contingency has decided to revive the Thursday night summer potlucks……..only they have centered the gathering around a communal bread bake. They have built a cobb oven at the Wet Hill Road homestead off Cement Hill Road. A cobb oven is a wood fired oven made from clay and straw.

I did find a Wet Hill Road off of Cement Hill Road. Looking for information about Bluebird Farm turned up a page with a picture, which links to a page with some directions, but not to anyplace on Wet Hill Road.

I did add a section heading in the community oven links page for this oven. It's on the community oven map as well.

Culver City Community Oven, Culver City, California

I added some more section headers to my community oven links page with headings for some of the community ovens I had previously discovered in California.

One of the ones I knew about was in Culver City, CA, mentioned in a Orange County Weekly blog post.

The blog post says in part:

Finally, the place to be an Southern California food lover that weekend is at the Helms Bakery complex in Culver City, where the Eat Real Festival will take place Saturday and Sunday. While there will be plenty of food trucks there, the focus of the festival is on food making. There will be masterclasses on preserving, fermenting and pickling; there will be a pig-butchery contest; there will be a community oven and sourdough lessons.

This sounds like a one-time community oven, rather than a regularly scheduled repeating event.

In fact, when I look at the Eat Real Festival site, I could not find any mention of a community oven. So, maybe it's there and maybe it isn't.