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.

Trinity Lutheran Community Oven, Fort Collins, Colorado

My ever-watchful Google Alert for community ovens found another community oven project underway, this time as part of Trinity Lutheran Church, Fort Collins, Colorado.

It's not clear where exactly they are getting their inspiration to build a community oven, but they have created a page for it on their web site, plus a Facebook Church/Religious Organization page and a Facebook Community page for it (the latter page is probably the better maintained one).

Colorado is already home to one functioning community oven in Carbondale (my links about them, their own site).

Some of their inspiration seems to be coming from the community oven built by the White Bear Lake United Methodist Church in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. (That's a guess, partly based on the fact that Trinity Lutheran used pictures of the WBLUMC oven on their web page.)

I wish TLC great success in their efforts.

Tracton Community Oven, Cork, Ireland

One advantage of having this blog and my Quest for Oven web pages is that I sometimes get information coming to me instead having to search it all out on my own.

In this case, I received an e-mail from Ireland telling me about a plan to build a community oven there (the first one in Ireland that I am aware of).

As of 10/13/2012 it's a project in progress, but the place where it is being built has a Facebook community organization page. (See the post for October 10.)

I have run across other art centers where a community oven has become part of the activities.

It's good to see the zeal for community ovens catching on in Ireland.

Nov. 17, 2012: I just checked their Facebook page again, and there is now a photo album titled Tracton Community Oven with 16 pictures in it, apparently added Nov. 1, 2012. Looks good. I could not tell much about the style of the oven or its size from what I saw.

Vino in the Valley, near Ellsworth Wisconsin Field Report

I have a previous blog post about Vino In the Valley, near Ellsworth, Wisconsin (their Facebook page).

I had the opportunity to stop at Vino in the Valley during a vacation in western Wisconsin. This was to be our last major outing of our vacation.

What I had heard about Vino in the Valley was that they had an outdoor oven. That turned out to be true. Their oven is outside.

What I had been expecting was that it would be a wood-fired oven. In that, my expectation was not met; it was fired by gas (of some kind). It actually was a two-level oven; it might be that the different decks were maintained at different temperatures.

What I thought might be a kind of vineyard setting (more like Falconer Vineyard’s Vineyard Bistro, Red Wing, Minnesota) turned out to more of an open-air supper club. There was a long building with fabric walls, many tables, a couple of bars, and even a lounge singer (seen below heading for her outdoor stage).

The building has a couple of angles so that the ends bend toward the gazebo that acts as the stage.

You can see the outdoor bar in the background here and many tables with umbrellas for people to wait at. After checking in at the reception desk, we were given one of the squarish electronic devices that vibrates and flashes to let you know when your table is ready. As a couple, we got seated very promptly.

We were actually seated near the front, right next to an indoor bar and close to the oven.

Whoever was running the oven, was very quick. I never had enough time to snap a picture of what was going into or out of the oven with the oven door open.

Unlike some of the other places we ate at on this trip, a small pizza came with a salad and a bread basket. The pizza when we got it was at best OK.

What Vino in the Valley apparently is, is an open-air supper club. They had a big parking lot, and there were a lot of cars in it. What Vino in the Valley is not, is a wood-fired pizza place. There was a mismatch in expectations between what I was hoping to find and what they are. For people who are looking for what they are, they are great. For somebody like me who looks for wood-fired oven pizza, they are not what I was expecting.


For similar places, click on the vineyard and farm labels on the right of the page. There is also a blog post about Wisconsin Pizza Farms.

Third Street Deli, Pepin, Wisconsin Field Report

On the third day of our field trip to Wisconsin, we had dinner at the Third Street Deli in Pepin. I had checked with them about some questions I had, so that when I arrived, I was recognized. We actually stopped by twice, once before they were heating the oven and later after they started serving food out of the oven.

The oven was built last year. It was more massive than they were expecting.  

The oven is part of an outdoor kitchen with some counter seating and an outdoor patio. There is some shelter from the weather while still being out of doors.

It's a pretty big oven. It looks like a relative big barrel-vault oven instead of a hemispherical oven more typical of a pizza-only oven.

They have some of the tools that I would expect for a wood-fired oven, but not all of them. (It's enough for what they do.)

Once the oven is heated up, they keep a fire in the back to keep the temperature up. That takes some practice to regulate and to cook with.

Here are a couple of calzones in the oven.

One got a little charred. This is apparently a rare problem, and they remade the item (for free of course) for the people who ordered it.

This is a "before" picture of my margherita pizza.

This is the "after" picture of my pizza. It pretty much comes out of the oven and then to the table. (It was only about 5 minutes before the pizza going in and me taking the after picture. Part of that was remembering to get my camera out before I ate the pizza.)

I thought it was a very reasonable price for the pizza ($8). Unlike A to Z Produce (the Pizza Farm), the Third Street Deli does not specialize in pizza; they have a lot of other offerings. (My wife really liked the roasted beet salad.)

The next time I'm in the neighborhood of Pepin on a day when A to Z is closed and Third Street Deli is open (Thursday through Sunday), I would happily go there again for pizza or for something else on the menu.

Rabbit's Bakery, Lake City, Minnesota Field Report

One the second day of a vacation at Stockholm, Wisconsin, we crossed the border back into Minnesota to visit Rabbit's Bakery in Lake City. We got there just before noon, so that baking for the day was over, but the wood-fired oven was being heated up for the next day's baking.

There were lots of tasting things in case waiting to be chosen. We saw lots of people coming in to buy things or to have lunch at the bakery cafe.

There was some breads of the day on the rack waiting to be taken, a menu for drinks on the wall. You can also see a sign for pizza (lower right), which they currently make once a month.

They have their distinctive sign hanging outside their door.

Here you can see the chimney stack and cinder block addition for their wood-fired oven. It looks like they also added some additional venting.

Just in case you can't find it going by the address, they also have a distinctive sign on the exterior wall of their bakery building.

Everything we bought was good. I'll certainly stop by again if I'm in the area.

Peterborough Community Oven

Sometimes there are coincidences. I discovered that I had overlooked some details in a couple of my sources about information about community ovens for Peterborough.

Someone else reviewing my links pointed out that I had confused Peterborough, Ontario, Canada (which has a Facebook community organization page). with Peterborough, New Hampshire.

Oddly enough, while I have been able to find a couple of mentions of the oven at Peterborough, NH, there is a bit more available on Peterborough, Ontario.

For Peterborough, NH, I found these two references:

• "Kin Schilling ... organized school kids to build a community bread oven in Peterborough" (link)
• "[O]ur community kitchen, grill, fire pit and outdoor Cobb/wood-fired C/Pizza oven offer great opportunities for cooking, often in community." (link)

For Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, I found these links:

• Their Facebook community organization page
• Mention of a survey asking for input about the oven
• A more recent online article that mentions the outdoor brick oven

It's kind of interesting to contrast these two efforts. The NH oven is a cob oven built in 2009. The Ontario oven is planned to be brick, but isn't built yet.

There is something to be said for having a good oven now instead of a great oven sometime in the future. (These are not mutually exclusive alternatives.)

Regardless of those issues, I wish good luck to both community ovens, and I'm sorry I got them confused.

North Adams Community Oven, North Adams, Massachusetts

Another recent addition to my list of US community ovens is the North Adams Community Oven, North Adams, Massachusetts (they have a Facebook community organization page).

There is a picture of the oven being built as part of this page about a related effort to create a local sourdough culture.

This oven will be near a community garden.

This oven is one of a few built as part of a larger arts project.

There are some other community oven projects in Massachusetts, but this one is close to New York, which also has a lot of community ovens.

Park Avenue Community Oven, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada

I received a lot of notifications about community ovens recently, both from Google Alerts and from e-mail.

One oven that I found out about is the Park Avenue Community Oven, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. This makes it the first community oven I have found in Nova Scotia.

They also have a Facebook community organization page.

As with many community ovens in Canada, this one is located in a park (the Leighton Dillman Park on the Dartmouth Commons) and near a community garden.

They have gotten some local television coverage, which is quite rare for these kinds of projects. Also rare, is that they got substantial local funding ($20,000) to build the oven and its environs, so the whole project ought to be very well established. (I like how the TV segment mentioned that some other organizations are now interested in having community ovens of their own.)

There was also some related press coverage (echoed here).

Community Oven, Los Angeles, California

The people who make up the Los Angeles Bread Bakers (a bread club) decided to build their own community oven. As part of the effort to document what was done, Alexandra Woodruff, one of their members, created a segment for the Good Food program on radio KCRW (the segment starts about 49 minutes into the show). Some pictures of the community oven were added to a post in the KCRW blog.

LABB has its own Facebook group page.

Alexandra Woodruff had interviewed me over the phone for the segment; I'm definitely in there. I am grateful for the opportunity to tell people about community ovens.

During my few words in the interview I mentioned a few community ovens that I know about. These included:

• Carbondale, CO
• Tenderloin National Forest (San Francisco, CA)
• Youngstown, OH
• Braddock, PA

These are all on my global list of community oven links (along with a map of community ovens in the US).

Olio Pizza e Piu, New York, New York

A New York Times article reviewing a different restaurant mentioned Olio Pizza e Piu, New York, New York.

Their home page says in part:

Olio Pizza e Piu brings the West Village something it hasn’t had in a long time, an authentic Neapolitan restaurant. Unique amongst Italian restaurants, Olio is at the intersection of two cities of great cultural and culinary wealth, Naples and New York. Synonymous with pizza for many, Neapolitan food has reached the four corners of the world like few other cuisines. However, the farther it has reached, the food has strayed from the cuisine that originated in Italy, which brought it fame and admiration For this reason, Olio preserves the true richness and character of pizzas, antipasti and pasta, conjuring the smells and tastes that fill the streets of southern Italy. Our love for true Neapolitan food inspires us to make gourmet pizzas and genuine Neapolitan dishes in a wood-burning brick oven as they have for generations in Italy. The only way to truly match our generous menu and exquisite service is to buy a plane ticket for Europe's gorgeous boot.

They also have a Facebook page.

Forcella, New York, New York

A New York Times on-line article reviewed Forcella, New York, New York (and Brooklyn, NY).

The review says in part:

Rather, Mr. Adriani has a fryer. If you follow the pizzarazzi, you might know about his montanara ($10), a margherita made with a crust shaped and flash-fried before being topped and finished in the wood-burning oven. Yes, pizza that’s fried and fired. As the kids put it: double rainbow.

The montanara pulls it off. The fryer lends a crisp airiness to the crust, not to mention a thin coat of oil that has the naughty pleasure of street food; the oven gives it color and adds a little smoke.

The review is not entirely positive.

The business also has a Facebook Restaurant/Cafe page.

It looks like an interesting departure from normal wood-fired pizza.

Community Oven, Carbondale, Colorado

A community oven long in the development stages in Carbondale, Colorado, reached a successful milestone with their first community bake.

They have their own home page.

They relatively recently created a Facebook page. (I don't know why their page is classified as belonging to an "Actor/Director"!)

Most recently they were featured in a story in the Glenwood Springs Post Independent.

I have watched this project develop for a good long time, and I'm very glad it has been successful.

I wish them a long, well-earned, continuation.

Roma Restaurant, Bar and Market, Willernie, Minnesota Field Report

I made a lunchtime visit to the Roma Restaurant, Bar and Market, Willernie, Minnesota. They are located at 460 Stillwater Road, Willernie, MN 55090. (Note that they also have a Restaurant page on Facebook.) They are on my map of wood-fired oven businesses in Minnesota.

The outside of the building is directly in front of its narrow parking lot. From what I could see of the interior, it looks like they added the oven and expanded next door to their original location in 2008.

The oven is tucked into the front corner of the original space, back behind the counter and by the kitchen. You can barely see it from their dining room.

One can really see that this is a wood-fired oven. (A small image of one appears on their home page.) They don't really explain where the oven comes from (or why they wanted one), but it certainly does its job.

The menus for Roma Restaurant are available for downloading. I took my wife there for lunch, and we ordered the Balsamico (without the proscuitto, since we are vegetarians). Service seemed attentive and fast. My wife and I both thought it was delicious.

We found the crust to be very tender, not the hard, chewy crusts we often find with any pizzas, but especially with WFO pizzas.

There were several other pizzas on the menu we wanted to try, plus there are lots of other tasty-looking items that are not wood-fired oven pizzas.

There is a sign in their window that says they can par bake their pizzas so you can finish baking them at home. That would be an interesting option to try.

It's certainly not in our neighborhood, but if we happen to find ourselves in that corner of the Twin Cities Metro again, we will stop in for another visit.

Tutta Bella, Seattle, Washington

While visiting Seattle and eating at one wood-fired oven pizza place, my friends and local guides showed me a place they knew that I had not heard of, Tutta Bella.According to a small sign in the restaurant, Tutta Bella is the oldest VPN-certified pizza place in Washington. That seems to correspond to the certificate numbers on the VPN web page that I found.

They certainly use genuine Caputo flour.

It certainly is a wood-fired oven.

It looked like a nice place, and according to their web site and the VPN site, there are actually several Tutta Bella locations around the Seattle area.

They all seem to have their own Facebook pages, but this page was the one I visited.

Queen Margherita, Seattle, Washington Field Report

I had previously posted about a news item that led me to the home page for Queen Margherita in Seattle.

I actually had a chance to visit and try the place out.

Two old friends of mine took me to the wilds of the Magnolia neighborhood in Seattle. We found a cozy storefront with a garage-style door and a nice sit-down space inside.

I chatted with one of the owners while we were waiting (just a short while) for our pizza. If I remember correctly, the oven was imported from Naples.

While they are not a VPN-certified pizza place, they do make pizzas in a similar style.

We ordered a couple of pizzas off of their pizza menu. I wasn't thinking about writing this report at the time, so I didn't happen to take pictures of the pizzas. I think we got the Queen Margherita and a pizza with white sauce instead of tomato sauce. Both were excellent.

I discovered they do have a Facebook community page.

This is a place I can highly recommend.

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.

Providence Farm, Duncan, British Columbia, Canada

I found a blog post that mentioned several businesses with wood-burning ovens on (or near) Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Posts like this are valuable to me because the identify several places at once, although they are also something of a burden for the same reason.



One of the ovens that was mentioned was, "the James Barber Memorial Oven at Providence Farm."


Providence Farm has an "Open Group" Facebook page.


Their home page is nice, except there is no search available. I didn't find anything about the oven there.


A Google search for the "James Barber Memorial Oven" turned up a few pages.


Apparently it was installed thanks to some fund raising. Partly it was a matter of moving an existing oven the size of a small cottage 200 kilometers. It sounds like an epic.


One page about the Canadian Chefs' Congress 2010 says, "Wet Saturday and Sunday nights were fueled by endless pizzas coming out of the James Barber Memorial Wood Burning Oven, a legacy presented to Providence Farm by the BC Congress Committee."


A blog post by Chef Jonathan Pulker has a picture of the oven. A different blog post had more information about the party.


There was a picture posted on Flickr as well.


This sounds quite incredible; I would love to see it.

Merridale Ciderworks, Cobble Hill, British Columbia, Canada

I found a blog post that mentioned several businesses with wood-burning ovens on (or near) Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Posts like this are valuable to me because the identify several places at once, although they are also something of a burden for the same reason.

The first place identified was Merridale Cider (which identifies themselves as Merridale Ciderworks).

They have a  "Local Business" Facebook page.

They have a page about their bakery and say a bit about their oven:

In the summer of 2006, we were fortunate to be approached to build a brick oven and bake at Merridale. We thought for mere seconds and said, "Of course". Now helmed by Alain Boisseau, our resident baker, we use this brick oven for our bread and pastries, apple pies, and special occasion menus. From late spring through early fall, we also make pizza, particularly for our famed Sunday night pizza on the deck.

This sounds like a lovely place to visit and a delightful place to eat and drink.