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.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Wisconsin Pizza Farms, Midwest Living Magazine, June, 2011

For a map with all the Wisconsin wood-fired oven businesses that I know, see this blog post.

While I was waiting for my haircut, the table in the waiting room had the latest issue of Midwest Living magazine.   I never really noticed that magazine before, but one of the cover stories was, "A Slice of Country: Pizza Farms in Wisconsin." (You can only read the beginning of the article without registering at the Midwest Living site.)

They reviewed a couple of "pizza farms" in western Wisconsin.

The first was the Stone Barn near Nelson, WI, which my wife and I have been to. They have a page for their "artisan foods," which includes their pizza.

The second was Suncrest Gardens Farm, near Alma, WI. They have a specific page for their pizza business.

There are other, similar businesses in the area as well, but they were not covered in the article.

Usually when I see somebody searching for a "pizza farm" they are looking for A to Z Produce and Bakery near Stockholm, WI. They have their own blog post here; there are many news items about them (like this one); and I have many links about them collected here.

(If you are interested in all "pizza farms" then you should go to the list of labels on the right of this page and click on "farm" or for related alternatives, "vineyard". For Wisconsin pizza farms, I put a section about them on my Business Ovens page.)


8/11/11: There was a segment of Dining with Dara that covered two different Wisconsin pizza farms (here).

Wide Awake Bakery, Mecklenburg, New York

Sometimes I find new brick oven places the long way around.

I found the Facebook page of the Wide Awake Bakery, Mecklenburg, New York, by chasing some information from the Yahoo! Brick Oven group. (On Facebook they say they are in Trumansburg.) There was a somewhat technical discussion about different kinds of ovens, which led to some pictures of bread and an oven, which led to the Facebook page of one of the group members, which led me to the page for the Wide Awake Bakery. (Here is their own page about the oven.)

The Facebook page didn't mention their home page in the info section, but it was mentioned in passing on one of the comments on their wall; I updated this post to link to it. (Their home page says they are in Mecklenburg.)

Oven builders appreciate their craft for itself, but for many it's only important insofar as an oven can be used to bake good bread (or pizza).

It appears that the Wide Awake Bakery has created an oven that will enable the production of a lot of good bread (and whatever else they decide to bake).