Quest for Ovens: November 2012

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.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Bill's Bread, Vashon, Washington

A friend on Facebook shared a link to video about a wood-fired bakery on Vashon Island in Washington State named Bill's Bread. The video link is here. Apparently Bill doesn't have a web site. I did find some information on a Manta page.

I also found an older blog post that mentioned Bill's Bread.

His story sounds like a real, down-to-earth guy who discovered his life's work making people's food lives a bit richer.

I'll have to see if I can meet him the next time I'm in Washington.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Poland?

Can anybody tell me why I get so many visits from users in Poland? Sometimes I have had more visitors from Poland than from the US. I don't mind, but I'm very curious to know what content I have that would be of interest to people in Poland.

I might have thought that some links on the main Quest for Ovens link pages were of interest, but I don't know what would draw them to this blog.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Bootleg Batard, Skokie, Illinois

I first discovered Bootleg Batard through their Kickstarter page back in September.

In November I found their Facebook group page.

Eventually I found a link to their own domain, which automatically forwards to their current home page.

Their fundraising on Kickstarter was successful. They flew Pat Manley out to work on the oven core.

They got some good local press here and here (apparently dating from October 18 or so).

Theirs is one of the most ambitious community oven projects I have seen, but it appears they have the experience to carry out their plans. Theirs would be the second community oven in Illinois, and Melina Kelson was involved in building the other one.